PEOPLE ON THE MOVE - Department of Geography

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Materials & Handouts: • Why People Move • Teacher Background • Push Factors • Pull Factors Suggestions for Teaching the Lesson Opening the Lesson 1. Explain to students that people move for specific reasons and they will be able to discover some of those reasons. Have students brainstorm some of the reasons that people have for moving from one place to another. Write the responses on the chalkboard or overhead. 2. Ask students to indicate whether or not their families have moved during their lifetime. What were the reasons? Some students may need prompts. The worksheet Why People Move may help focus discussion. Add these reasons to the list on the chalkboard/overhead. Plot the locations of student moves on a map of your community, Texas, the United States, or world. 3. Explain to students that reasons for moving can be categorized into push factors and pull factors. Push factors represent perceived problems or dissatisfaction with the place in which people are living. Pull factors represent perceived benefits of the place to which people are drawn. Have student categorize reasons in the list they have generated as either push or pull. 4. Have students summarize (generalize about) the reasons for movement of people from place to place. Statements such as, "People move from areas of unemployment to areas where jobs are available." is a good example of a summary statement. Developing the Lesson 5. Using maps and graphs available in many US history texts or world atlases, help students to understand that historically the US has been the recipient of large numbers of people from other parts of the world, that many countries have contributed to this flow of people, and that the movement has varied in size from time to time. Distinguish between immigration and emigration. 6. Help students hypothesize about push and pull factors that might have been operating for specific groups at specific time periods, e.g., the Potato Famine, Ireland, 1840s, Industrial Revolution and Enclosure, United Kingdom, mid- 1700s, revolutions and military conscription in the German states, 1840s and 1870s, pogrom in Russia, 1890s, Mexican Revolution, 1910s-1920s, conflict in Central America, 1980s, etc. Ask student why their families emigrated to the United States. Have them interview their grandparents and relatives. Map their routes. 7. Hand out the documents Push Factors and Pull Factors. Explain that these are
actual, although slightly edited letters/documents written by Scandinavian immigrants in the late 1800s. Have students read Push Factors first. Ask students to infer what reasons pushed emigrants to leave their home countries. Compare these inferences to those generated in Step 6. Then, have students read the pull documents and infer what reasons drew people to the US. Compare these again to those generated previously. Help students focus on the questions of how push/pull factors operating for late 19th century Scandinavians were the same as or different from those operating for other immigrants. Also, focus on how the factors operating for the Scandinavians differ from or are similar to those generated in Steps 1-4. Developing the Lesson 8. Close the activity by having students identify several major reasons for the movement of people from place to place. Help them to understand that reasons may differ from place to place, and time to time. Assessment Ask students to write a list of generalizations regarding factors which push people to move and pull people to certain locations. Ask them to exchange their lists and ask small groups of students to write stories or plays about young people at different periods of time making the decision to move. Each story/script should feature a clear explanation of both push and pull factors. References and Resources Martin, Philip, and Elizabeth Midgley. 1994. immigration to the United States: Journey to an uncertain destination. Washington D.C.: Population Reference Bureau.
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PEOPLE ON THE MOVE - Department of Geography

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