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Crossing the Globe: Discovering Migration


By Margarita I. Gotay


chnTraveling the world has been an eye opening experience. I’ve learned a lot about the world and myself. As the title of the book for this course reads, The Age of Migration, everything that is developing and changing in the world has something to do with free trade and the consequences of that, migration of people and products. Obviously there are different opinions on whether free trade and migration are good or bad things for our world, for the rich and the poor. It's a topic that has been even talked about in our Global Studies class. Migration has lots of advantages. The blending of cultures, enriches them. And if people learn to live together in peace there will be fewer things to worry about.

    Who benefits from free trade and migrant workers? The rich countries benefit from immigrants that come to live and work. Although most immigrants move to richer countries with more job opportunities they never forget whom they left behind and send money back home.  Many send half their paychecks back home to their loved ones. Many think that the act of migrants sending money back to their homelands affects their economy but not really.

    This project includes six papers of some of the countries I visited during these past three month and some signs of migration I observed in each one. "Incoming" talks about Japan and its need for incoming products. “From Hong Kong to Beijing” talks about my experience in China and Hong Kong and compares both a little. “India is not only the Taj Mahal” talks of my travels in South India. “Where religion takes you” talks about migration having to do with religion. “Mac-ing It” talks about Mac Donalds in all the countries where I spotted one, and the last one "Colombians in Spain" talks about job situations that Colombians are having in Spain.

    It’s important for people to understand migration because it has revolutionized the markets after the Cold War. As it is says in Chapter 1, of Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller’s book, The Age of Migration, one of the defining features of the Post Cold era has been the growing saliency of international migration in all the areas of the world. And these stronger interconnections that exist in the world are changing our views and relationships with one another. Asian magazines start looking more western. Mac Donald’s, Burger King, Starbuck’s, KFC start spreading all over--in front of the Pyramids, in almost every block in Hong Kong, in Chennai, everywhere.
  
   Migration has become globalized, and has grown at a fast pace, entailing labor migration, fleeing refugees, permanent settlers, female migrants, and politics that talk about migration or defend it. That’s what is evolving today. Migration goes way back in time to nomads and colonialism.

     The period of colonialism as said in Chapter 3, of Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller’s book, The Age of Migration, stresses that colonists gave rise to various types of migration, they migrated as sailors, soldiers, farmers, priests, traders and administrators. And in this webpage you’ll find many of these examples extended. Actually our shipboard community has “migrated” by the means of sailing all over the world for the past the months stopping in Hawaii, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Burma, India, Egypt, Turkey, Croatia, and Spain. In Croatia and Spain articles I talk more about colonialization and how missionaries migrated since colonization to spread the word of God. In Spain you can read about the effects that colonizing countries have on their subordinates.

    My classmates and I have been asked to keep our eyes open to the world, to everything new, homey, and disturbing and our projects talk about some of the things we've found along the way. Around the world we saw how the Coca Cola cans and flavors changed. We learned how every culture has an effect on the others. And mostly how migration connects the east with the south, the south with the west, the north with the south, the north with the west, the west with the east and so on.

cccWe've come to know the five myths stated in Douglas S. Massey's article, "The Five Myths About Migration: Common Misconceptions Underlying U.S. Border- Enforcemt Policy": the poorest nations are not the majority sending migrant countries, neither is migration is caused by rapid population growth in migrants' home countries, wages are not the primary reason why people migrate, migrants aren't atracted to the US generous public benefits and the don't intend to live in the US forever.

There is much people don't know about migration that is very important, because migration is currently shapping our world. So I urge you to discover signs and migrant movements around the world and you may even discover a little about yourself. Remember some of our histories are tied to a foreign land.

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