The United Nations (1998), in its Recommendations on
Statistics of International Migration, revision 1, defines a migrant as “any
person who changes his or her country of usual residence”. Identifying who is a
migrant can be difficult due to the dynamic nature of migration, which in turn
implies defining and assessing temporal and spatial criteria.
Migration can
be permanent, if a person never return to his or her place of origin, or long
term if a person moves to a country other than that of his or her usual
residence for a period of at least a year (12 months), so that the country of
destination effectively becomes his or her new country of usual residence. A
short-term migrant is defined as a person moving to a country other than that
of his or her usual residence for a period of at least 3 months but less than a
year (12 months), and often is the status of a person who moves from one region
to another in accordance the seasons. However, if a person moves to a new
country for purposes of recreation, holiday, visits to friends and relatives,
business, medical treatment, or religious pilgrimages, he or she is not
considered a migrant (UN 1998).
In terms of space patterns, migration can imply the
movement from one country to another (international migration), or movement
within a country (internal migration, particularly between rural and urban areas),
or movement trans nationally if migrants “forge and sustain multi-stranded
relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement”
(Schiller and al 1992).
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