There are three demographic variables that shape human communities: birth, death, and migration. Birth and death are discrete and predictable, but migration has no limit. From the beginning man has sought to escape or improve his condition. This is a human attribute, part of what it means to be a human being. We are explorers, we search for food and freedom, we have sought to capture new lands and new people, and we have fled to escape the great catastrophes. This is how we have mapped the face of the earth. This is how we have advanced. The differentiation of races, languages, cultures, and settlement patterns, the peopling of entire continents, the dispersal of technologies and skills that led to the agricultural, industrial, and scientific revolutions are all founded in migrations.

-Marilyn P. Davis, Letter to author, March 118, 1993

Historians and anthropologists provide a lens that allows us to see the history of humankind from a vantage point outside of our daily existence. This lens gives us insights into the causes and consequences of our immediate actions; it allows us to make connections between those actions and the past and the future; and it places those same actions on a continuum of the human phenomena that shape history. As educators we attempt to provide these lenses for our students to see the importance of these connections and to understand their place in history.

Migration is a human phenomenon that needs to be studied with these lenses on; the reasons people have migrated fill the history books from the study of ancient peoples to modern times. The most recent waves of migration from Latin America provide a wealth of information for future historians and anthropologists to study. We are living in and are part of a process that merits attention and consideration. In the midst of it, we lose sight of the bigger picture. We fail to see the repetition of history. We struggle with the political issues bombarding us in the media, in our schools, and in our communities. One of the goals of Why Do People Move? is to give students tools so that they can look beyond the immediate circumstances and gain insights into the historical process of migration.

Why Do People Move? looks at the migration flows from six countries in Latin America: Mexico, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Cuba. Students will develop an understanding of some of the conditions that exist in both sending and receiving communities, of the connections that facilitate migration, and of the causes of these movements. These six countries were chosen because they experienced some of the largest migration flows in and from Latin America during the 1980s. One case, the balseros from Cuba, was selected to illustrate a new pattern emerging from that country. In addition, one of the goals of this unit is to promote an understanding of the reasons people have for leaving their community or country.

Migration to Latin America has shaped that region's history: ancient peoples came down from the north following herds and occupied Central America; Europeans came in search of spices; and African slaves were forced to the islands in the Caribbean. Other groups- from Chinese escaping the labor conditions in North America to Jews escaping the concentration camps in Europe- have migrated to the region. The movement of people from rural areas to urban areas is another pattern visible in Latin America. The pattern of out migration from Latin America now shapes that region's development. The decade of the 1980s saw an increase in the numbers of people migrating from Latin America.

Migration is a complex process that extends beyond borders, connecting communities and producing interactions between people. Why Do People Move? attempts to present one dimension of this process of migration from Latin America- the factors that influence and shape a person's decision to leave his or her country. The cases in Why Do People Move? do not represent all the reasons people leave their communities but rather some of the more visible ones. With each case, students explore this question while they learn about a particular cultural element of that country.

Unit Goals

• to expand students' knowledge and understanding of some of the reasons people leave their countries
• to promote an understanding of the obstacles people face when deciding to move
• to promote an understanding of the complexities of migration
• to make connections between students' own experiences of migration and the cases presented in the unit