Which tag(s) from immigration, emigration and migration do we need?

Question

In the Genealogy Conference Room @vervet pointed out that:

As a side note, I noticed the other day when editing a question that there are tags for immigration, emigration, and migration. It's not really that clear which tag to use as every migration includes an immigration and an emigration. By far the most commonly used tag is immigration (64) compared to migration (6) and emigration (5), which makes me think that the other two should perhaps be synonyms of immigration.

If you agree that only one of these is needed with the other two as synonyms, then which should be the master? Or if you disagree why do you think there should be more than one?

Answer 1

I think we should:

• use migration as a broad tag to cover all movements of people between and within countries
• rename immigration to be called immigration-records and apply it to records relating to the entry of people into a country
• rename emigration to be called emigration-records and apply it to records relating to the exit of people from a country

Answer 2

I disagree with this statement:

every migration includes an immigration and an emigration

Note this definition from Wikipedia:

Emigration is the act of leaving one's native country with the intent to settle elsewhere. Conversely, immigration describes the movement of persons into one country from another. Both are acts of migration across national boundaries.

Especially for large countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, there can be plenty of things to research about migration which do not involve finding explicit emigration/immigration records. If we cannot use migration to tag movement within country boundaries, what should we use instead?

The situation is complicated further by the fact that what we call "immigration records" -- e.g. passenger lists required by the US Federal Government to collect data about immigration -- actually contain a great deal of information about the arrival of people who are NOT immigrating -- US Citizens returning home, lists of crew working on the ship, and people coming to the USA who had no intention of making permanent residence here.

I believe there should be three separate tags.

• emigration for questions about people leaving their home country
• immigration for questions about people entering a new country
• migration for questions about the routes taken by individuals and families because of historical events (the pull & push factors, possible modes of travel, how the geography of an area affects the movement of people, etc.)

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In this answer vervet says:

My only issue is that it is often hard to say which tag should be used.

If that is the case, it may be a sign that the question is broad, and could be broken down into multiple questions, or that other tags might be more useful.

Answer 3

Having thought about this some more, I think I was a bit hasty to suggest the three tags should be synonyms. As @JanMurphy has pointed out, all three tags have a slightly different purpose.

My only issue is that it is often hard to say which tag should be used. A good example of an unclear case is Finding records of emigration/immigration from Germany to South Africa? In an ideal world, perhaps we would duplicate the tags and add immigration and emigration, but there are only room for 5 tags, and other tags about location and date are (in my opinion) more important.

So I would suggest keeping all three tags, but on questions where there is some ambiguity and use of any of the tags would be accurate, to default to immigration, because that tag is the most widely used and understood.