ABSTRACT
It has now become commonplace to use a set of ‘push-pull factors’ to talk about cross-border movements – migration, smuggling, and human trafficking. Rooted in modernisation theory, scholars of migration in the 1960s developed the push-pull model to understand migration both within and across countries, as part of broader social, economic, and cultural transformations. 1 Embedded in this framework of theorising is a binary of developed and developing, city and countryside, modern versus traditional: 2
Modernization theory splits causes of migration into “push” factors associated with “traditional” societies and “pull” factors located in “developed” areas and evaluates how they influence individual decision making of migrants and stay-at homes. 3
