A Moving Story

When travel was by ship

When I hear the word migrate, I think of animals or birds moving great distances, then returning later from where they started. Migrating is part of life for some creatures. Humans travel distances too so are they migrating? I personally rarely if ever describe a person as migrating and here's why. 

When people move, they are going to another location with the intent of it being permanent. So they are not migratory unless they have an itinerant lifestyle and that still doesn't sit comfortably with me. When leaving, they are emigrants. When they are arriving, they are immigrants. 

So if someone is spoken of as leaving their country, they are emigrating. When they are spoken of as heading to their destination, they are immigrating to that location. 

Based on those two examples, I don't have reason to describe a person as a migrant although if neither the departure location nor destination is inferred, then they are a migrant. Some use migrant at all times, perhaps the closeness of emigrant and immigrant is confusing to them. Think of emigrants as 'exit' and immigrants as 'inward'. 

P.S. I've just read an article in the Guardian Newspaper online with a headline about migration to Australia (see here). Is this just a deliberate move or substandard journalism? Either, way, I'd call it the latter. They also expect people to pay something toward this!