Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
continents. Migration also occurs at a
regional scale
with migrants going to a neighboring country to take
advantage of short-term economic opportunities, to
reconnect with their cultural group across borders, or
to fl ee political confl ict or war.
economic life was better in coastal Nigeria, were lured
to the coast for short-term jobs while the oil economy
was good. The migrants, usually young men, worked
as much as they could and sent almost all of the money
they earned home as remittances to support their fami-
lies. They worked until the oil economy took a fall in the
early 1980s, and at that point, the Nigerian government
decided the foreign workers were no longer needed.
The Nigerian government forcibly pushed out 2 million
foreign workers.
Global economic processes and the lasting effects of
European colonialism certainly played a role in this West
African migration fl ow. If we study such a fl ow only at
the global scale, we see migrants moving from one poor
country to another poor country. But if we use both the
global and regional scales to study this fl ow, we under-
stand regional economic infl uences and the pull of islands
of development in Nigeria.
European colonialism also had an impact on
regional migration fl ows in Southeast Asia. Europe's
colonial occupation of Southeast Asia presented eco-
nomic opportunities for the Chinese. During the late
1800s and early 1900s, millions of Chinese laborers
fl ed famine and political strife in southern China to
Economic Opportunities
To understand migration fl ows from one poor country to
another, it is not suffi cient to analyze the fl ow at the global
scale. We need to understand where the region fi ts into
the global interaction picture and to see how different
locations within the region fi t into interaction patterns at
both the global and regional scales. Cities in the devel-
oping world are typically where most foreign investment
goes, where the vast majority of paying jobs are located,
and where infrastructure is concentrated. These port
cities become islands of economic development within
larger undeveloped regions. Geographers call these cities
islands of development
(Fig. 3.12).
Within the region of West Africa, the oil-pro-
ducing areas of Nigeria are islands of development. In
the mid-1970s, poorer people in Togo, Benin, Ghana,
and the northern regions of Nigeria, perceiving that
Major "islands of development"
Figure 3.12
Islands of Development
in Subsaharan Africa
.
Adapted with permission from
:
Peter J. Taylor and Colin
Flint,
Political Geography:
World-Economy, Nation-State
and Locality
, 4th ed., New
York: Prentice Hall, 2000.
"Labor in"
"Commodities out"
After;
Taylor and Flint
