According to the International Migration report from the United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, in 2006 there were an estimated 190,634,000 immigrants around the world. That is close to 3% of the world population. As discussed in the south in the hearth of the north, over 61% are settled in the more developed countries.
I’ve used the data available to create the interactive visualization below. Play with the configuration of the map using the Total number of migrants AND the same as a percentage of the total population to color the countries.
While there is no surprise to the fact that the United States accepts the highest number of migrants (38M), powering a very diverse society that serves as launchpad for products and services aimed at a global audience, we must wonder if a similar effect can be perceived in the cases of Russia (12M) and Germany (10M).
When analyzing the data as percentages of total population the immediate focus of attention is the middle east, using its riches to attract migrants. Just consider the United Arab Emirates, where 71% of the population are immigrants.
On July 7th, 2007 (7/7/7) the producers of Live 8, organized under the SOS – Save Our Selves movement, will attempt their largest event yet:
Live Earth will use the global reach of music to engage people on a mass scale to combat our climate crisis. Live Earth will bring together more than 150 of the world’s top musicians for 24-hours of music from 7 concerts across all 7 continents. Live Earth will bring together an audience of more than 2 billion at the concerts and through television, radio, film, and the Internet.
That is a third of the world population listening. A conversation that could only be matched by all cell-phone users dialing in. The concerts will take place on cities across all continents: China – Shanghai, Australia – Sydney, South Africa – Johannesburg, United Kingdom – London, Brazil, Japan, United States & Antarctica, and will feature over one hundred artists across all genres
With an Oscar for best Documentary Feature, a partnership with Microsoft for the online broadcasting of the Live Earth event, a roster of celebrities signing up to participate in the concerts, it is obvious that Mr. Gore knows very well how to leverage global culture to [...]
If the post a brighter future revealed the possible destinations for the masses of migrants moving around the planet, this image from Natural Resources Conservation Service within the United States Department of Agriculture may tell us where they come from. A global population density map represents the number of people per square kilometer around the globe.
While the map confirms what we’ve known for a while about India and China, it highlights some other countries that we don’t hear too often such as Bangladesh and Indonesia.
For the hard figures, check the list of countries by population.
The ethnographer’s job is to immerse himself in the culture being studied and participate in order to get a better understanding of their ways of life. By this definition Prof. Wesch has accomplished a rather unique milestone by summarizing the insights of his work in the digital arena into the short video Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us, which digests this relatively new concept in a way that makes it accessible to those that are not part of the elite (l33t) group at the forefront of the web evolution.
The video, which in less than 2 weeks has been watched almost one million times, owes its sudden popularity perhaps to the fact that not only it provides an engaging explanation, but it turns the message inside out, inviting the viewer to become part of the very same culture being studied. By the end of the presentation almost any viewer realizes she has also being a user (part of the machine) at some point. In my opinion this is the most important accomplishment of this group: create a gateway into a culture to the point that any person is capable of participating.
The Digital Ethnography working [...]
Observing this visualization produced by NASA the phrase “light at the end of the tunnel” acquires a new meaning when we consider that the usual flow of migrants typically goes from darker areas to those were light abounds. Whether the flow is from rural to urbanized areas or from the developing world to richer countries, the patterns of migration seem to follow the light.
The real reasons that force the masses of migrants to try their luck elsewhere may be better understood by studying the interactive tool from Yahoo! News about Minimum Wages Worldwide (via matthewgood.org), or the more comprehensive visualization from The Gapminder World with the Income per capita.
In any case the over-used stereotype of the migrant arriving to the big city just to be blinded by the bright lights of all its commercial bonanza may be more than a well rehearsed scene.
There are approximately 6.5 billion people in the planet. 10% of them live in one of the 100 world’s largest cities and urban areas:
Tokyo, Japan
Mexico City, Mexico
Mumbai, India
New York, United States
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Delhi, India
Calcutta, India
Jakarta, Indonesia
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Cities are the big players in many of the discussions we’ve had in this space: migration tends to flow into the cities, whether originated in foreign countries or rural areas; they are the cultural hubs that represent the most relevant activity of each nation; because of their large populations they are typically the target for large global corporations looking to deploy their products and services; and they are the source to some of the largest problems such as pollution, disease, violence, etc.
The City Mayors website posted the article Progress in the world’s cities will decide the future of Planet Earth citing a report from the Worldwatch Institute about the need to focus on urban infrastructure ugprades in order to accept and serve the more than 60 million people who are added to their population every year.
If global development priorities are not reassessed to account for massive urban poverty, well over half of the 1.1 billion people projected to join [...]
I’ve found many ways of pointing the finger to global corporations for the displacement of humans, based mostly on the premise that globalization has shifted human activity to those hubs where it is cheaper. But in the game of crisis-induced migrations, globalization may have found its match: global warming. We should start to consider the demographic changes ahead of us.
Hearing about it all over the news is one thing, but experiencing it first hand is a real wake-up call: I’ve lived in Canada for the past 9 years and during that time I have see the usual cruel winter days, but I’ve also seen some unbelievable days of +10¬∞C right in the middle of the season (when it should be -10¬∞C!). An event like this is hard to forget and they say most people have fond memories of one of such days when nature shared a little smile to keep them going. People remember because this is not supposed to happen more than a few times in a life time. So what do you do when this becomes the norm? In what could’ve been an omen, we celebrated the first day of [...]
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