Talk:Human migration

Duplicate paragraphs

I noticed that some paragraphs were repeated in the article. Is this standard in Wikipedia for articles derived from the Britannia Encyclopedia of 1911, or was this a mistake? Rickyrab 18:01, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Um, you introduced them yourself, see the page history. It's possible that two concurrent submits (too many clicks?) caused the server to duplicate them. I'm cleaning it up now... --Joy [shallot] 19:50, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This page has problems

One of them is the contention that "other migrations generally didn't give rise to new states" - it treats cenutries of history of Moorish Spain as a mere annoyance in the politics of Christian Europe.

Another is the short paragraph that deals with the Great migration that brought down the Roman Empire and produced the Europe we know today. Great migration is a dissambig which sends users to this paragraph, and the only link one can provide is Völkerwanderung, but that's not much of an article either. I think we should move Great migration to Great migration (dissambiguation) and write an extensive article at Great migration. That would be a slightly euro-centric usage, but it was one of the largest migrations ever and even the dissambig suggests that this is the primary meaning of the expression. Zocky 17:29, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Oh? Human migration is a general phenomenon. The Migration period, that I guess covers the same as the Great migration, was a specific phenomenon that well merits its own article. It seems to me, given that I now really do understand your intentions, that what would be best to do, is to move Völkerwanderung to either Great migration or Migration period, and then, of course, to redirect from the other, and, of course, improve the article. --Ruhrjung 18:07, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

Who's best at navigation

...the Polynesians, starting with the Lapita culture, have proven to be the most successful in the art of navigation, as the Norse adventurers in the North Atlantic and the Arab traders in the Indian Ocean did not create permanent settlements.

I hope no one is forgetting Iceland (Norse), Zanzibar (Arab), Dar es Salaam (Arab) and other permanent settlements, not to mention the spread of Islam across the Indian Ocean rim! Who was most successful in navigating is kind of subjective anyway, hence my edit. --147.109.250.24 01:38, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I would also question equating skilled navigation with creating settlements; the link seems tenuous. I would suggest removing the 'claim' the Polynesians (who were certainly great navigators) have been proven to be the most successful navigators. --SteveP 07:19, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Mass migration?

Hi, I agree with other that this page has errors. One in particular - that human migration necessarily refers to the movement en masse, as opposed to individual migration. I think this particular definition may be for one area of study/practice, but not for all - Guppy 16:40, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The first line of the article reads "Human migration denotes any movement of groups of people from one locality to another." --Wetman 21:43, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Requested move 26 December 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Clear consensus to not move the article is present. Opposers largely stated that human migration is not the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC due to the other myriad things that a would-be searcher could be looking for, including Migration (ecology) and Bird migration, which were especially cited. They state that moving Human migration to the basepage would WP:ASTONISH readers and does not aid in navigation. (closed by non-admin page mover) cyberdog958^Talk 12:14, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

---

• Human migration → Migration
• Migration → Migration (disambiguation)Migration (disambiguation)

– The entire article uses the term migration instead of human migration, except the first paragraph. This article is the primary topic of Migration, as confirmed by the hatnotes and the sources actually used by the article. Using the title Human migration fails WP:ASTONISH since readers expect to read about pre-historic migration patterns from such title. Kenneth Kho (talk) 07:45, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Oppose –

• The entire article uses the term migration instead of human migration, except the first paragraph – yes, that is how it generally works with disambiguated titles.
• This article is the primary topic of Migration, as confirmed by the hatnotes – certainly not. Bird migration easily disqualifies this by itself (it gets more monthly page views!), and it's not the only other high-traffic listing. The hatnotes mean literally nothing, as they are meant to aid the reader who has already managed to get to the "Human migration" article.
• Using the title Human migration fails WP:ASTONISH – that's potentially a problem with the article title, not evidence that this is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC.

Remsense ‥ 论 07:52, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Human migration is the highest placed on the disambiguation list, and the second result that came up when googling for "migration wikipedia" after Migration (2023 film), arguably the movie only won because its wikipedia title being precisely "Migration" provides higher ranking, and bird migration yielding higher traffic might also have to do with the number of people that found difficulty locating the wikipedia article of the colloquial migration. Kenneth Kho (talk) 12:01, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

It is not clear to me how these points support your argument. The question is whether Migration = Human migration for readers, and as illustrated above, other topics obviously seem to compete for that mindspace more than enough such that human migration doesn't represent the vast majority as required by WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. If I can try to self-analyse, I really don't think human migration always pops to mind first for me—again, I think of birds. Remsense ‥ 论 12:06, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

@Kenneth Kho, given you added reasoning after I replied (generally please don't edit your comments like that)—many things could be the case, but frankly it seems a bit absurd that this would be a meaningful factor that would impact the core logic here. If you would, pause and consider for a moment whether it is plausible for bird migration to pop to someone's mind when they think of merely "migration". If this is plausible, then it's already pretty unlikely that there's a PRIMARYTOPIC here. Remsense ‥ 论 14:59, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

It is plausible that someone thinks of the birds when they hear of the word "migration", but it is not plausible that someone thinks migration means "bird migration", while it is very much common for people to think that migration means migrating to another state or country. Kenneth Kho (talk) 15:07, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

It is extremely plausible that someone is looking for bird migration when they type "migration" into the search bar. Remsense ‥ 论 15:08, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

I imagine the bird expert who is looking for bird migration when they type "migration" would be astonished if they see bird migration being titled migration, and not astonished if they see human migration being titled migration. Kenneth Kho (talk) 15:12, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Good grief—no one would be expecting to get Bird migration, but they very plausibly could be expecting a disambiguation page from which they could get there. Remsense ‥ 论 15:15, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Nobody likes a disambiguation page, the bird expert would want to click on bird migration instead of migration (disambiguation), and the lay readers would want to click on migration, instead of migration (disambiguation) to then click human migration. Kenneth Kho (talk) 15:21, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

• oppose no reason to believe that human migration is the wp:primarytopic. Further, it would be wp:astonishing to readers given the prominence of bird migration [1]—blindlynx 14:29, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  There are times when bird migration has more traffic, there are times when human migration has more traffic, but the point is that even if bird migration has 10X the traffic of human migration, there is no way that migration means bird migration, while it is very much common in conversations to say that migration means human migration. Kenneth Kho (talk) 15:09, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  The relative prevalence of the topics, both often referred to merely as "migration" in many instances, does matter when the burden we are trying to clear is a primary topic being the intended referent in an overwhelming majority of cases. Remsense ‥ 论 15:13, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  The sources in Bird migration use the term bird migration, and not migration. The sources in Human migration mostly use the term migration, and not human migration. Kenneth Kho (talk) 15:16, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, but in casual conversation and in running text throughout the article, merely "migration" is often uses, and suffices to specify the topic. It is very clear what I am saying here, and it feels like you are trying to dance around a very clear argument at this point. Remsense ‥ 论 15:17, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  WP:AT is based on what the sources say, the sources say bird migration is bird migration, and human migration is migration, the titles should follow it. Kenneth Kho (talk) 15:19, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  That is a good point, thank you. I'm now typing merely "migration" etc. into academic databases to try to get a sense of which terms are used when. Remsense ‥ 论 15:27, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  I searched wiki library for 'migration' of the 50 most relevant hit 9 are about human migration and the renaming 41 are about animal migration of which 19 are about birds. [2]

  I'm sorry but i simply I do not see any evidence that 'migration' means 'human migration', if you have any please show it to us—blindlynx 17:34, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  On the other hand, my Google Books results are skewed roughly the other way. I do still think the threshold isn't met, but it seems more reasonable to consider than before. Remsense ‥ 论 17:40, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  True. Agreed nothing points to one being a clear meaning of the unqualified term—blindlynx 18:21, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  True, the top results are mostly book titles without disambiguated migration, talking about human migrations. Kenneth Kho (talk) 21:11, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  To analyze Google Books, we can use their Ngrams tool, so for example we can check which words appear before and after mentions of the word 'migration' in books like this. This doesn't mention either humans or birds as such. We can check what comes together with the top-most prefix and suffix "of" like this, and here we start seeing both people and birds mentioned. If we try to read into the "the" forms like this, there's more mentions of people and birds. I don't think this is conclusive at all, either way. --Joy (talk) 22:15, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  The wiki library leans towards hard science, searching 'human migration' also mostly yields prehistoric migration outside the scope of this article. I figured the best way to get results on contemporary migration there is to relate it to climate change which is hard science. Searching for 'climate change migration' yields results such as "Mapping the Future of Migration and Climate Change Science", "Climate Change and Migration: A Dynamic Model" "How Should We Talk About Climate Change and Migration?". Climate experts tend to think of humans when they think of migration, even though birds are also affected, in which case they need to clarify that it is about birds. Kenneth Kho (talk) 21:10, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  If you look at the titles in either search on wiki library there are plenty of hits for human migration where it is qualified with 'human' and for animal migration is just 'migration'. i am not seeing how 'human migration' meets WP:PT1 for just 'migration'—blindlynx 21:44, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  The ones about animals contain the name of the animal in the title as far as I can see, it does not necessarily say bird migration, but it says something like "factors such and such affect migration of insert some bird names". Kenneth Kho (talk) 22:32, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

• Per WP:DPT, we can have a look at some stats. WikiNav for Migration for November shows readers chose the top option the most, but not nearly as commonly as would typically be expected from a primary topic - of the 1.2k people who saw the list (1193 in pageviews), we could only identify 227 clicks to the top option (~19%), while 146 were filtered (~12%), while we know 409 went elsewhere (~34%). The second most common option was actually a recent cartoon about bird migrations listed near the bottom. If the proposed primary topic doesn't compare well to everything else, and doesn't even compare particularly well to something relatively trivial like that, it doesn't seem like we have a problem with navigation that this change would resolve, rather it seems like we'd just risk creating new problems. (Oppose) --Joy (talk) 22:05, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  (Oh, thank you for cluing me in to that tool.) Remsense ‥ 论 22:12, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  Good to hear :) Do note that its output is not always as clear as this, a recent example where I had to go into a lot of more nuance is at Talk:Pavlova (dessert). --Joy (talk) 22:19, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  There are only 636 outgoing traffic, the bottom most table is exhaustive. The movie should be excluded due to recentism, so that leaves us with human-related migration being 227+72+13=312 (66%) and animal-related migration being 68+55+37=160 (34%), sufficient to establish a primary topic. Kenneth Kho (talk) 22:26, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  The film came out last year, so I feel totally excluding it for its bias is a bit misleading. I wish we had this data over a slightly longer timeframe. Remsense ‥ 论 22:32, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  It's possible to look up historical data in the meta:Research:Wikipedia clickstream archive. For example:

  clickstream-enwiki-2017-11.tsv:

  • Migration Human_migration link 617
  • Migration Animal_migration link 233
  • Migration Bird_migration link 150
  • Migration Immigration link 129
  • Migration Hyphen-minus other 53
  • Migration Migrant link 52
  • Migration Emigration link 48
  • Migration Rearrangement_reaction link 37
  • Migration Fish_migration link 37
  • Migration Data_migration link 37
  • Migration Reverse_migration_(birds) link 30
  • Migration Molecular_diffusion link 23
  • Migration Insect_migration link 21
  • Migration Software_modernization link 18
  • Migration Main_Page other 18
  • Migration System_migration link 16
  • Migration Migration_(Bonobo_album) link 13
  • Migration Population_genetics link 11
  • Migration Cell_migration link 11
  • Migration Schema_migration link 10
  • Migration Forest_migration link 10
  • total: 1574 to 21 identified destinations

  clickstream-enwiki-2020-11.tsv:

  • Migration Human_migration link 338
  • Migration Migration_(ecology) link 148
  • Migration International_migration link 91
  • Migration Hyphen-minus other 32
  • Migration Schema_migration link 22
  • Migration Immigration link 22
  • Migration Rearrangement_reaction link 21
  • Migration Migrant link 17
  • Migration Cell_migration link 12
  • Migration Data_migration link 11
  • Migration Molecular_diffusion link 10
  • Migration Migration_(virtualization) link 10
  • total: 734 to 12 identified destinations

  clickstream-enwiki-2022-05.tsv:

  • Migration Human_migration link 275
  • Migration International_migration link 84
  • Migration Migration_(ecology) link 70
  • Migration Bird_migration link 56
  • Migration Animal_migration link 49
  • Migration Immigration link 23
  • Migration Emigration link 14
  • Migration Rearrangement_reaction link 11
  • total: 582 to 8 identified destinations

  So the human migration article seems to consistently get less than half of identifiable clickstreams, let alone any long tail of filtered clickstreams (which should tilt more towards the less popular topics). --Joy (talk) 22:36, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  It is easily two third of the outgoing traffic if you lump in the numbers for international migration (which the dab deems a sub article of human migration) and immigration, these are the same demographics that the human migration article is trying to cater. Kenneth Kho (talk) 22:40, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  Once again, it's not easily two thirds of the outgoing traffic because the filtered (anonymized) clickstreams are not part of these numbers, and as I explained below, lumping these together does not implicitly make navigation better. --Joy (talk) 22:42, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  No, you're failing to include the filtered (anonymized) category in the calculation. Obviously part of this is because WikiNav was never fixed to make this more obvious, but still.

  Likewise, you can't just add this up mechanically and proclaim that the human migration article is necessarily a good way to continue to lead reader traffic to the other two related topics (international and immigration), because those are clearly different topics that may attract different readers. The existing unwieldy hatnote on top of the human migration article already illustrates that to an extent. --Joy (talk) 22:32, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  I am not sure how anonymized category can be used to conclude anything, and if there is a case to be made to explain why half of the ingoing traffic clicked away, it is because they are looking for the article on contemporary migration, and the current human migration title does not sound like it. Kenneth Kho (talk) 22:37, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, it can't be used to conclude much, other than to make it more obvious that there's uncertainty here. Or ambiguity, hint, hint :)

  If you primarily want to rename the human migration article, that's a completely valid discussion, but apparently it should be a separate one. --Joy (talk) 22:45, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose my sense is pretty strong that none of the articles we have that could be referred to as "migration" are sufficiently primary under either WP:PT1 or WP:PT2 to be at the base name. And like, my sense is that I read more works that add "human" when talking about human migration than when talking about animal migration. A quick scan over articles indexed by ebscohost show that "bare" migration is most likely to refer to some form of animal migration (birds and fish, most commonly it seems) and human migration is referred to by both "human migration" and "migration". A few examples on the first page of results. It'd be nice, however, if the Wikipedia search autocomplete could figure out to prioritize showing Migration (human) when search for just "migration"... Hm, there's no Migration human redirect, I wonder if creating that would help...
  • "Exploring the potential of dental calculus to shed light on past human migrations in Oceania."
  • "Using micro-CT to explore bone density variations in the skulls of the vulnerable Opsariichthys uncirostris uncirostris (Three-lips fish) during reproductive migration to a Lake Biwa tributary."
  • "Wild salmon migration routes influence sea lice infestations: An agent-based model predicting farm-related infestations on juvenile salmon."
  • "Rare and highly destructive wildfires drive human migration in the U.S."
  • "Understanding the global subnational migration patterns driven by hydrological intrusion exposure"
  • "Macro-scale relationship between body mass and timing of bird migration". Skynxnex (talk) 22:34, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. The status quo is correct because there is no strong evidence of a clear primary topic. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 16:32, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. Animals migrate. – Joe (talk) 08:25, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Wiki Education assignment: Humanities 151 - Migration - Home - Borders

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 5 September 2025 and 12 December 2025. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lovemydog67 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Meerkat77 (talk) 14:13, 27 November 2025 (UTC)