...take a step back and look at the full picture of migration.
One theme surrounding migration that has been prevalent during my travels so far is the different push and pull factors that cause people to travel and migrate. This is a topic that has been discussed in my economics class in Limerick and it really caught my attention. A pull factor is things such as better education, weather, or freedom in a country; whereas a push factor is something that deals with your current country of residence that pushes you away like a natural disaster or a poor economy. As a student abroad I tend to only be aware of the pull factors of the different places I want to visit, but it was in my economics class that I started to take a step back and look at the full picture of migration.
One place that this theme was prevalent was in Doolin, Ireland. It is a small town by the Cliffs of Moher which I visited my first weekend in Ireland. In this small town of a few hundred people and the main way, they make money is through tourism. The majority of the houses we saw were owned by people from other countries and are used just as vacation homes or were bed and breakfasts. After talking with our taxi driver, who was amazing and told us so much information it was better than any tour I have been on, it was prevalent that if you didn’t want to work in a tourism spot you left Doolin for a better opportunity. This is what his daughter did as she is a pharmacist and there is only one position for a pharmacist in the small town, so she had to migrate to get a job. Overall, it is extremely interesting to take a step back when visiting other places and talk to the locals to see what really goes on in these places rather than just looking at them at face value.
Song of the blog: Almost (Sweet Music) by Hozier, this is one of my favorite artists and he is from Ireland!
Tip of the blog: Talk to the locals! Not just for direction, get to know them a little bit, it makes traveling to other places even more exciting and interesting.
Spring 2020 Migration Blogger, Ryan M. Vent