Migration effects of social imbalances

Abstract

Social imbalances cause or underlie practically all migrations. Due to the diversity and multidimensionality of both processes, the multiplicity of channels for their interaction, their integration into larger social trends, and other overlapping factors, this influence is nonlinear, inhomogeneous, and sometimes ambiguous. Nevertheless, when considering imbalances in such migration optics, it turns out that their dynamics are coupled with changes in the intensity, nature, and directions of human flows. First, the trend towards smoothing global income inequality in the context of the crisis of globalization and other social shifts makes the upward dynamics of mobility change to rather oscillatory, sometimes even downward. Second, although the dominant role of the socioeconomic imbalances in the movement of the population persists, sociopolitical differences between states, especially gaps in the security of living conditions, are becoming increasingly important. This is manifested in the growing share of refugees and asylum seekers in the total number of migrants. Third, against the background of the continued dominance of the global asymmetry of world development in determining migration routes, the effect of imbalances at the regional level is intensifying, in the context of which there are shifts in the geography of migration, in particular, a more intensive expansion of migration corridors between the countries of the South compared to other routes and a powerful surge of forced migration in Europe.