Erin O'Day - Week 4 - The World's Most Congested Human Migration Routes

Rates of mass-migration are increasing, and it's not just because of the Syrian refugee crisis. There are huge exoduses taking place all over the globe, clogging the migration routes. The biggest ones right now are in the Eastern Mediterranean (that's the Syria, east Africa, and middle-eastern migration), the rest of the Mediterranean (the north African refugees), Central America (those fleeing to the north to escape things like the gang violence and drug wars), and Southeast Asia (people fleeing religious and political oppression).

To be honest, I really only knew about the Syrian refugee crisis because that's all the media has been talking about. I really wish the media would be more informative and not just focused on one thing at a time. I was trying to find an article about migration that wasn't talking about Syria, and it took a lot longer than it needed to. It is so sad that all this is happening in the world, all this strife and fleeing. It is easy to take out relative security for granted, but this is a wake up call.

This made me think about the migrations we've been talking about in class. First, we had puritans migrating to the New World to escape religious and political oppression. But then, ironically, we later saw people migrating to places like Pennsylvania and Rhode Island to escape the religious pressure in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and other areas. Then there was, of course, the forced migration of slaves from Africa. The population of the new world rose dramatically because of all the migrants clogging the sea ways.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/09/150919-data-points-refugees-migrants-maps-human-migrations-syria-world/