Pull Factors of Migration

Think of a place you'd like to go. Why would you like to go there? Is it fun, is it relaxing, or do you have some special memories attached to it? These are factors that would pull you towards that place. When we talk about pull factors of migration, we are discussing something similar, although on a much broader scale.

Pull Factors of Migration Definition

Pull factors can be anything that would make a specific place desirable to move to: strong economy, plenty of job opportunities, access to education, a safe, tolerant, and welcoming culture, natural beauty, a free, fair uncorrupt society where everyone has a voice, and strong institutions that protect personal rights and businesses. These can all be pull factors that draw a person to a place in the hope of a better life than what they came from.

We can see this as people go from less developed to more developed countries or moving from rural to urban areas.

Push vs. Pull Factors of Migration

Push factors and pull factors can usually be seen in any migrant situation. A push factor pushes someone away from a place, while a pull factor attracts them to a place. It can almost be said that they are two sides of the same coin. for example, if someone is leaving a place due to a conflict, a pull factor of where they are headed would likely be a safer, more stable, and more peaceful place.

Every place usually has some pull factors and some push factors, as no place is perfect. However, there are places that migration patterns show are more desirable to live in than others. Many of the migration crises you may hear about usually involve a big event or conflict that cause many people to leave their homes in search of somewhere new.

Although these are often big news stories as there are typically huge numbers of people moving in a very short timeframe, migration usually happens in less spectacular and newsworthy fashion. Every day people are pulled to countries or places they believe will give them and their children a better life than they had, perhaps where they are able to make more money relative to their cost of living and send part of their salary back home as remittances. It might be because they want their children to go to good schools and universities that will open up possibilities that they would not have where they are.

Environmental Pull Factors

Environmental pull factors include moving to places with a more favorable climate, natural beauty, lower risk of natural disasters, and less risk from floods, droughts, or climate change, but often a significant environmental pull factor is living in a city as opposed to a rural area. The work opportunities, access to more goods and services, and potential for a higher quality of life make cities highly desirable.

Political Pull Factors

Political pull factors include having more rights and liberties in a country, access to good health and social services, and good education. Having laws in a country that protect freedom of religion and prevent discrimination based on race or sexual orientation can also be pull factors.

What about having more rights and protection to start a business? In the country a person emigrates from, there might be a lot of corruption or discrimination that are barriers to starting a business, buying property, or daily operation. Pull factors in the country they immigrate to could include strong and stable institutions and more business-friendly practices, where there aren't officials to pay off or discrimination to navigate in order to grow and operate. This can incentivize entrepreneurship and business growth that can stimulate an economy's growth, making the destination country even more desirable.

Safety and access to good education are major pull factors that cause people to move to a specific place. A stable society that can allow families to grow and kids to grow up educated is something that is easily taken for granted, but for hundreds of millions of people in the world, this is a big reason they relocate to new countries in order to give their kids this opportunity.

Social Pull Factors

Despite having political protections, many still suffer from social oppression due to cultural reasons such as their religion, culture, sexual orientation, skin color, and other factors. Moving to a society with a higher social tolerance and a history of diversity and inclusion can be a pull factor that attracts people to a certain place.

Social factors may pull people to migrate to places that do not necessarily have a higher standard of living and are not a more developed economy but perhaps align culturally or socially more with their values. Such subjective cultural aspects can be hard to measure. An example might be someone moving to a country that values their religion more than where they are.

Economic Pull Factors

Economic pull factors such as good and plentiful work opportunities and strong and stable economic growth are large pull factors for a country.

Remittances are money migrants send back to their homes to help family, friends, and relatives pay for expenses where perhaps there are not as many work opportunities. Many migrants come to a new country to find work, live inexpensively, and save enough to send back to their families.

The UN International Organization for Migration estimates that $702 billion in remittances were sent back by migrants to their home countries in 2020.³ The United States has been the largest country from which remittances are sent for the last several decades as it has also been the country with the largest international migrant population, having some 51 million people that were not born there as of 2019.³

Pull Factors of Migration: Examples

Here are just a handful of examples:

Syrians in Germany

During the Syrian refugee crisis of the 2010s, many Syrians made their way to Germany. Why Germany? Social policies within Germany allowed the country to host many refugees, at the same time that some other European countries were not as welcoming. Also, many refugees wanted to go to Germany instead of other European countries because of Germany's pull factors. Germany's strong economy, many job opportunities, and good access to education and social services are pull factors that made it attractive to refugees.⁵

Rural to Urban Migration in China

China's population was 60% urban as of 2019, up from just 18% in 1978.² Hundreds of millions of people moved from rural China to urban China over the course of about 30 years from the 1970s to the mid-2000s. This is believed to be the largest migratory movement in human history.

Fig. 3 - Construction in China.

The major pull factor in this mass urbanization was job opportunities in cities that could lift families out of poverty. Low-level manual labor jobs in coastal factories became very desirable as most who lived in the countryside lived in poverty. A factory job in a big coastal city may not sound like much, but jobs like this were the backbone of the migration that lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in China.

The American Dream

In the 19th century, the US experienced massive immigration from all over the world. The "American Dream" was pulling people who sought a new start for themselves and their descendants. People saw the US as a place where they could be anyone and become something, not constrained by the social or political norms they may have had to abide by in places they came from. Or, perhaps they were not oppressed in their homelands, but simply left to seek opportunity in a vast, open, still largely unsettled land. The US owes a lot of its size and strength today to these pull factors.