| Brain Drain | Large-scale emigration by talented people |
| Chain Migration (Migration Ladder) | Migration of people to a specific location because relatives or members of the same nationality previously migrated there |
| Circulation Migration | A type of migration that occurs on a short-term, repetitive, cyclical, or regular basis. |
| Contagious Diffusion | The rapid, widespread diffusion of a feature or trend throughout a population |
| Diaspora | A scattered population with a common origin in a smaller geographic area (ie. people who come from a common ethic background but who live in different regions outside of the home of their ethnicity) |
| Distance Decay Function | A function that represents the way that some entity or its influence decays with distance from its geographical location. |
| Emigration | Migration from a location |
| Immigration | Migration to a new location |
| Brain Gain | The gaining of a brain drain |
| Expansion Diffusion | The spread of a feature or trend among people from one area to another in a snowballing process |
| Forced Migration | Permanent movement compelled usually by cultural factors |
| Voluntary Migration | Permanent movement undertaken by choice |
| Gravity Model | A mathematical prediction of the interaction of places, the interaction being a function of population size of the respective places and the distance between them. |
| Guest Worker | Citizen of a poor country who obtains a job in Western Europe or the Middle East. |
| Hierarchical Diffusion | The spread of a feature or trend from one key person or node of authority or power to other persons or places |
| Internal Migration | Permanent movement within a particular country |
| International Migration | Permanent movement from one country to another |
| Intervening Obstacle | An environment or cultural feature of the landscape that hinders migration |
| Intervening Opportunity | The presence of a nearer opportunity that greatly diminishes the attractiveness of sites farther away. |
| Lee’s Model of Migration | Added to Ravenstein’s Migration theory by defining push and pull factors. |
| Migration Transition | Change in the migration pattern in a society that results from industrialization, population growth, and other social and economic changes that also produce the demographic transition. |
| Migration Stream | A constant flow of migrants from the same origin to the same destination. |
| Migration Selectivity | Process to control immigration in which individuals with certain backgrounds (i.e. criminal records, poor health, or subversive activities) are barred from immigrating |
| Mobility | All types of movement from one location to another |
| Net Migration | The difference between the level of immigration and the level of emigration |
| Periodic Movement | Movement – for example, college attendance or military service – that involves temporary, recurrent relocation |
| Push Factors | Induces people to move out of their present location |
| Pull Factors | Induces people to move into a new location |
| Refugee | A person who is forced to migrate from their home country and cannot return for fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group, or political opinion |
| Relocation Diffusion | The spread of a feature or trend through bodily movement of people from one place to another |
| Remittances | Money migrants send back to family and friends in their home countries, often in cash, forming an important part of the economy in many poorer countries. |
| Step Migration | Migration to a distant destination that occurs in stages, for example, from farm to nearby village and later to a town and city |
| Stimulus Diffusion | The spread of an underlying principle, even though a specific characteristic is rejected |
| Time-Contract Workers | Immigrant recruited for a fixed period to work |
| Transhumance | The seasonal migration of livestock between mountains and lowland pastures |
| Urbanization | An increase in the percentage and in the number of people living in urban settlements |
| Suburbanization | Movement of upper and middle-class people from urban core areas to the surrounding outskirts to escape pollution as well as deteriorating social conditions |
| Counterurbanization | Net migration from urban to rural areas |
| Ravenstein’s Laws (1) | The majority of migrants go only a short distance. |
| Ravenstein’s Laws (2) | Migration proceeds step by step. There is a process of absorption, whereby people immediately surrounding a rapidly growing town move into it and the gaps they leave are filled by migrants from more distant areas, and so on until the attractive force is spent. |
| Ravenstein’s Laws (3) | Migrants going long distances generally go by preference to one of the great centres of commerce or industry. |
| Ravenstein’s Laws (4) | Each current of migration produces a compensating counter-current. |
| Ravenstein’s Laws (5) | Natives of towns are less migratory than those of rural areas. |
| Ravenstein’s Laws (6) | Females are more migratory than males within the kingdom of their birth, but males more frequently venture beyond. |
| Ravenstein’s Laws (7) | Most migrants are adults: families rarely migrate out of their country of birth. |
| Ravenstein’s Laws (8) | Large towns grow more by migration than by natural increase. |
| Ravenstein’s Laws (9) | Migration increases in volume as industries and commerce develop and transport improves. |
| Ravenstein’s Laws (10) | The major direction of migration is from the agricultural areas to the centres of industry and commerce. |
| Ravenstein’s Laws (11) | The major causes of migration are economic. |
