Project #1

There are multiple different reasons for why people choose to migrate and where they choose to go when they do. As far as my migration pattern goes it can be considered as voluntary, forced, and internal migration. The forced migration could be considered when my family moved to Washington because even though I was still young I had no choice about the matter since it was due to my father’s work. The move to Washington would be the only one that I would make until going to college. This move could be considered as voluntary migration since I decided to attend school here in Montana. Both of which were internal migration. There are two consistent reasons for migration between my family, which are voluntary migration, and internal migration. From the information I had on my family there weren’t any cases of interregional migration from the generations that I knew of but I’m sure that further back there had to have been some kind of interregional migration. There are a couple instances of forced migration in my family due to being in the military and being stationed in a specific place. Based off the information on my family it is pretty clear that all of the migration that took place was internal. You can see that my fathers side of the family is from the south and that the only migration that really takes place is internal and voluntary staying relatively close. The only exception to this was my father who was stationed in California while in the military. This can be seen as forced migration because he had to move for a certain social reason beyond his control. The movement history for my father’s side of the family can be explained pretty easily because it was all based around moving to areas down south. There aren’t any factors of age, sex, sibling rank that seem to have encouraged movement in any consistent way for my father’s side of the family.
As far as my mother’s side of the family goes the same to migration patterns can be seen. The patterns that are consistent with my mother’s side of the family are voluntary and internal migration. Like with my father’s side there aren’t any huge moves taking place on my mother’s side of the family. My mother’s side of the family is dominantly from California and there weren’t really any migration changes from there. Also like my father’s side of the family on my mother’s side there weren’t any specific factors that encouraged movement in any consistent way. It would be interesting to look further into the past of both my mother and father to see where my ancestors originally came from. If my past ancestors did come from an interregional migration it would also be very interesting to know what brought them to the United States and what made them settle down in the two certain areas that are persistent in my families migration patterns. It’s a really cool concept when you think about why am I here and how did my ancestors have an influence on how I got to be located in the United States in they did indeed migrate here from another country.