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Geography • Inquiry Lab

Why Do People Move?

Use geographic reasoning to compare push factors, pull factors, barriers, networks, and individual choices in migration.

GeographyInquiry LabGrades 7–12 / Adult45–60 min
1 · Launch

Start With the Question

Essential Question: Why do people migrate, and why do people facing similar conditions sometimes make different choices?

Migration is rarely explained by one cause. Work, family, violence, climate, policy, opportunity, and personal networks can combine in different ways.

Warm-up prompt

What could make a destination attractive but still difficult to reach?

2 · Check Your Starting Point

Quick Pre-Assessment

This is not a grade and it will not reveal answers yet. It simply estimates what you already know before instruction.

1. A push factor encourages people to:
2. A pull factor:
3. A barrier to migration could be:
4. Migration networks are often built through:
Your result will appear here.
3 · What You'll Learn

Learning Objectives

Classify

Distinguish push, pull, barrier, and network factors.

Analyze

Explain how factors interact.

Compare

Evaluate two migration cases.

Avoid

Reject overly simple single-cause explanations.

4 · Build Context

Historical Background

Geographers study migration as movement shaped by conditions at origins and destinations, intervening obstacles, information, social networks, policy, and personal circumstances. The same conditions can produce different decisions for different people.

Context connection

A useful model organizes evidence, but real people do not behave like equations. Historical context and individual agency still matter.

5 · Vocabulary

Tap to Reveal Key Terms

Condition encouraging departure.
Condition attracting people toward a destination.
Barrier affecting movement.
Social connections that support or shape migration.
Movement within a country.
Movement across national borders.
6 · Explore Evidence

Evidence Lab

Migration Decision Map
Final activity will connect origin, route, barriers, and destination in a map-based decision model.

Observe → Infer → Question

Observe: Which factors operate at the origin?
Infer: Which barriers could alter the route?
Question: What personal information would a map not show?
Historian's source check

Who created the evidence? When and where? For what audience or purpose? What does it reveal, and what can it not prove by itself?

7 · Quick Check

Check Your Understanding

Which is the best example of a migration network?
Why are push-pull models useful but incomplete?
8 · Think Like a Historian

Make a Claim

Prompt: Which factor—economic opportunity, safety, policy, environment, or social networks—most often deserves greater attention in migration explanations?

Claim-evidence-reasoning reminder

Claim: answer directly. Evidence: use specific historical information. Reasoning: explain why that evidence supports the claim.

9 · Apply It

Transfer the Learning

Application Challenge: Use the push-pull-barrier-network framework to analyze a migration example from history or the present.
10 · Dig Deeper

Extension

Compare the Great Migration with another migration movement and identify one shared factor and one major difference.

12 · Sources & References

Reference Model

  • U.S. Census Bureau — migration resources.
  • International Organization for Migration — migration concepts.
  • Library of Congress — migration and immigration collections.
13 · Finish

Complete the Lesson

Progress is local to this prototype for now.