Notion : Spaces and exchanges

Problmatique : What drives people to leave their

country to go and live in another country ?
Intro : Im going to talk about the notion of spaces
and exchanges but first of all i would like to give
a definition of this notion. Spaces and exchanges
deals with continuous movement or circulation.
All types of exchanges : people, trade, media,etc.
Here we will take an interest closer to people.
Migration is a topic that arouses the interest as
today nearly two hundreds million people are
migrants. We can easily ask ourselves what
drives people to leave their country to go and live
in another country ?
In order to illustrate the notion, I have chosen 4
examples.
First, ill briefly recall why the pilgrims Fathers left
England, thanks to an article from BBC News,
published on january 18th 1998. We all know that
the Pilgrims left Plymouth on september 1620 on
board the Mayflower.
The ship dropped anchor near Cape Gog in
Massachusetts. According to the text they were
102 passengers on board about half of them
Puritans . They were also refered as
renegades in this article meaning that they
betrayed their religion. Indeed, they were

considered like traitors by the King james himself

because the Puritans belived they were the true
cristians and wanted to purify and reform the
church of England. They thought they could have
direct communication with god and didnt need
church hierarchy.
And for that they were persecuted from all sides :
living under constant threat of imprisonment or
even execution. After 3 years they were forced to
flee.
In this situation the cause of the departure is that
a group of people is discriminated against
because of their belives. They are an outcast and
even the government dont respect them. It
points out at the issue of religion that still takes
place in some country like India or Paskistan. This
kind of migration is due to oppression and
subjection.
There is an other kind of migration that we know
better and which is very common today. Everyone
has somewhere in his head the picture of a dead
syrian childs body on a beach in Turkey.
Well this image has become the symbol of
Mediterranean crisis. Since 4 and an half years a
civil war has started in Syria : those who are loyal
to president Bashar-al-assad against the antigovernment opposants. This war has caused the
death of many people and since terrorists have

joined the conflict the war has become more

awful. The people who survived are afraid and
nervous because anything can happen to them.
In this big country people have tried to go in
more peaceful areas but their lives and the lives
of their children are in jeopardy. Thats why
people decided to flee to Europe where there is
more security for their families. This live-saving
decision has created a real business. Indeed ,
some people buy a cheap and often damage boat
to make people leave, because syria is not very
from Europe coast. Of course they dont do that
for free they make people pay a lot of money
between 1 thousand and 6 thousand euros per
person. Even if people living in war are not very
rich theyre using all their savings to go in this
dangerous adventure.
To come back to the document, the picture of the
little boy is overwhelming. We can see a little
baby lying, head against the ground, pale We
may wonder why his parents took him on this
boat with maybe a hundred other person ? Who
would put his childs life in jeopardy ? No one
except someone whos totally desperate. And
that is what drives war refugees to leave their
country. They just dont have any other solution
and if they want to survive they have to go. War
is something thath treathen peoples life and
thats why they do all the can to find a better

place. The second reason why people leave their

country is war and danger.
There is another type of migration and to explain
that im not going to use a document but a real
story of someone I know. So this man was born in
a poor family in Guinee, he was the only boy in is
family. His father died when he was young so he
eventually had to take care of all his family. In
this small village there wasnt any job expect
maybe farmer and he wasnt prepared for this
kind of work. As he knew someone in Cotonou he
decided to go and find work to help his mother
and sisters.
But in Cotonou he didnt find anything to do as he
never went to school exept very low-paid job. He
didnt have enough money to send some away,
and his mother was very sick. One of his friend
advise him to ask a visa to go in America or
France but his file was rejected several times. So
he decided that he was going to marry a girl who
already got the green card. The girl came in
Cotonou and accompagned him to the ambassy,
they didnt know that an man was going to ask
them questions, but he did and they failed the
test. So his file was rejected forever. Few years
later as his family became poorer and poorer he
started saving up to go to Syria and try crossing.
When he arrived in Syria he had to work for a

year and was considered as a slave. But he was

determined, so when the money was complete he
went to see the men and the day after he was in
Italy. There he managed to go in France where he
knew some people. He applied for asylum and
was given papers, he started to work in a
restaurant and was going to college at the same
time. As he was living in a friends house he
quickly sent money to his mother nearly 8
hundreds euros per month and changed the life
of his family.
This story highlights the 3 reason why people
leave their country which is poverty.
The last reason i will talk about is also a subject
that everyone is talking about today : climate
change. The change of the climate has incrased
natural disasters. And when people are striken by
disasters their life change completely. There is a
film produced by Mickael NASH in 2010 that is
untiteled Climate refugees . On the poster of
the film we can see the earth on the face of a
little boy who is looking at us kind of worried, it
points out at the climate problems. In the film,
they talk about the disasters that often happen in
Asia. Indeed this area we can count a lot of
disasters such as tsunami, hurricaine, eathquake
etc..

When a people is touched by this kind of event

they just lose everything, some lose their entire
family others lose their house, all their
belongings. And it is really hard to just move on,
thats why often after natural disasters people
decide to leave. Some of them because they
dont have anyting to live, some others because
they cant support the memory of the event. And
to forget it they need to go away. In haiti for
example after the eartquake, the government
couldnt rebuild everything and still today entire
neighborhood are destroyed.
This last reason to leave nobody can do anything
exept trying to do our best about climate change
if we want to prevent our lives.
We talk about some negatives reasons why
people leave. But lets keep in mind that some
people leave their country to discover new things
and new countries, but they are not some many
compared to the others.

We can eventually say that there is a lot of

reasons that drives people to leave their
countries to go live elsewhere and it is often
misery, poverty, war that make a lot of people
leave. People leave when they are suffering and

unhappy. We can just hope that all this misery

stops.
.