“A vital society preserves difference... conformism kills society”
 Thomas Merton

Society owes its cultural enrichment and its viability in significant measure to the movement of people – to migration in all of its forms. But migration has also frequently given rise to social and national tensions which challenge the strategies and vision of governments.

Migration refers broadly to the purposeful movement of people to a secondary area within or beyond their country of origin where they can expect to reside securely and establish a living.  Predominantly, migration relates to a voluntary movement which is made in the search for a new domicile.

Those fleeing war and/or persecution are called refugees or asylum-seekers.  Most refugees will be registered with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), who will seek to act on their behalf. Some will spend time in a transit area until repatriation becomes appropriate. Often re-settlement in a third country will prove to be their safest and most viable option. But many will end up spending years in camps or living on the fringes of foreign metropolises separated from their kin and experiencing disruption in their education, health care and economic sustenance. 

Australia is comparatively generous in its intake of refugees. But, resettlement places lag well behind the numbers forced into exile, despite some intense international efforts to negotiate solutions with persecuting governments.  Most persecution in recent decades has its roots in unjust civil government or in warring pressure groups, rather than in international crises.

Those who flee hostile circumstances, and whose right to refugee status has not been established, are termed asylum-seekers.  In recent years, many countries, including Australia, have toughened their stance on accepting asylum-seekers.  Many people in dangerous situations face the acute dilemma of urgently needing to find security and legal protection, but having no access to the UNHCR. A perilous voyage in search of safety often ends in death on the journey, or in detention in the chosen country of asylum.  For those held in detention, local community support for asylum-seekers has often forged mutual respect in the face of deterrent government policies.

Displaced people are those who have been subjected to natural disasters (volcanic eruptions, famine, earthquakes, tsunamis) or to conquest by a hostile power, and who hope eventually to return to their former homes. In the case of natural disasters, integrated humanitarian rescue and rebuilding can often fend off the need for permanent resettlement.

Transportation is the term applied to a form of forced migration which results from the slave trade and some convict systems. Transportation was perhaps the most regulated of migratory movements, but its prescriptive nature often ensured relatively fair, if very harsh, treatment.  Many slaves and convicts won their eventual emancipation and chose to remain in their adopted homeland. In more recent times, many displaced persons from war-torn Europe arrived in Australia, in the twenty years following the Second World War, under a scheme of bonded labour – a modified form of transportation. They had to work and live in harsh conditions on many of the major Australian capital works projects which laid the foundation for today's economy.

Many reasons can encourage people to migrate - adventure, the desire for an improved lifestyle and greater choice, skills shortages/surpluses, mineral booms, better education, overcrowding, health factors, and so on. Migration, (not to be confused with nomadism or 'guest workers'), has been a fact of human existence throughout time. In the modern era, the disruption and destruction which followed the Second World War in Europe led to a large-scale migration of displaced persons/refugees, as well as of migrants. The United States of America and Australia are two examples of nations whose populations and economies have been substantially enhanced as a consequence of immigration.