TITLE:

Human geography: Refugees

NAME:
teacher)

Elina Srkel (Geography and biology

INSITUTION:
University, Finland

Viikki Teacher Training School of Helsinki

Description
The topic is refugees, or what we call here forced migration. The
lessons should certainly include key concepts and definitions such
as refugee (the UN's official definition), refugee quota, asylum
seeker and environmental refugee. The idea of forced migration is
a development of the underlying concept of migration, which is
probably better to study earlier. This provides a conceptual
framework such a push and pull factors, which students will see
may give an illusion of free will.
This is a lesson on a very important contemporary, global issue: it
can be studied in a European, Asian, American or African context.
What regions and nations are people leaving in large numbers? Do
we know why? Where are people trying to get to, and why? Global
and local scale statistics are important as well as statistics and
personal stories.
The lesson can be developed to investigate and speculate on how
forced migration might change in the future. For example, how the
climate change will affect different areas, and how this will influence
to peoples lives. This may enable students to consider the idea of
environmental refugees and why environmental refugees are
mostly found in developing countries. The connections between
physical and human (economic, social, political) geographies are
important to make.

Environmental refugees in Red Crosss refugee camp in Nicaragua in

1999. Hurricane Mitch entered Nicaragua in 1998. Photo: Hanna
Ahokoivu.

Environmental refugees in Red Crosss refugee camp in Nicaragua in

1999. Hurricane Mitch entered Nicaragua in 1998. Photo: Hanna
Ahokoivu.

Discussion
Through conceptualization of forced migration students understand
that migration in often not a matter of rational decision-making: that
refugees are forced to escape.
Similarly, though the conceptualization of environmental refugee,
students can analyse maps and statistics to examine global trends
the largest refugee flows run (even now) from developing country to

developing country. Environmental refugees are forced to move but

not always (yet) to another country. But climate change may
steadily change this.
By comparing the scientific knowledge, students previous
knowledge and information from different kind of media sources,
students can think geographically about international migration: the
knowledge helps students to understand the interaction of physical,
historical and political processes behind the issues. With such
geographical knowledge forced migration might make more
sense. Geographical knowledge also brings out how our lives and
choices are connected worldwide, for example, via climate change.