and the Construction of Vulnerability - Child Trafficking

2. Reasons for Leaving Home:
The Global Context
The per cent age of the world’s population that migrates internationally has
remained fairly stable and very small over the past century – around 3 per cent. 3
However, because the human population has increased from approximately 1.6 billion
to 6.5 billion people over the same period, there are many more migrants today
than there were at the start of the twentieth century. 4 The number of persons living
outside their country of birth rose from an estimated 75 million in 1960 to almost
191 million in 2005. Around 60 per cent of recorded migrants are to be found in
the world’s more affluent, economically developed nations. However, migration
between developing countries remains a significant phenomenon, with Asia home
to some 49 million migrants, Africa to some 16 million migrants, and Latin America
and the Caribbean to around 6 million migrants. 5
There have been major changes to patterns of migration during the post-world
war II period. Over the past two decades, globalisation and other social forces have
accelerated such changes and led to more diverse forms of migration, affecting a larger
number of countries. 6 The reasons for cross-border and internal movements in
the contemporary world are also many and varied. 7 All of the factors discussed below
are relevant to both adult and child migration.
2.1 Demography and Global Economic Restructuring
and Development
Out of the world’s 6.5 billion people, 1.8 billion are aged 0-14 and 2.9 billion 0-24. 8
However, these young people are not evenly spread across the globe. In 2000, those
aged between 0-14 made up 18.2 per cent and 19 per cent of Sweden’s and the UK’s
populations respectively, but 30 per cent of the population in Albania and Turkey;
36.3 per cent in Uzbekistan; 39.6 in Bolivia; 41.6 per cent in Iraq; 43.5 in Afghanistan;
43.9 in Cambodia; and 50.1 per cent in Yemen. 9 Approximately 600 million of those
aged below 18 in the world today live in absolute poverty. 10 Nearly half of the world’s
186 million unemployed are aged between 15 and 24. These statistics perhaps help
to explain why it is that migrants in general tend to be young and that migrants from
developing countries are younger still. 11
3. IOM, 2005
4. U.S. Census Bureau, 2006
5. GCIM, 2005
6. Castles and Miller, 1998
7. GCIM, 2005
8. US Census Bureau International Data Base, 2006
9. United Nations, 2001, pp. 47-50
10. Save the Children Fund UK et al, 2001
11. World Bank Group, 2005, p. 33
Child Migration and the Construction of Vulnerability
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