What is Migration?

A broader perspective

These days, one word seems to be on everyone’s lips — migration. For some, it marks the beginning of a new life, for others, it echoes the pain of lost roots.
But what truly lies behind this widely spoken concept? Is migration merely the act of crossing borders, or is it a journey that reshapes the invisible maps within us?

Across the world today, millions of people are on the move. Some in search of work, others for refuge, and many simply looking for a place where they can breathe freely. Yet these movements are not only geographical. They are emotional, social, and deeply tied to identity.
When a person leaves one country for another, they carry more than their belongings. They carry their sense of self, which sometimes gets lost along the way.

From a sociological perspective, migration represents one of the most transformative disruptions in both social structures and individual identity.
Because a human being is not just a body in motion. They are a bearer of their environment, their language, their culture.
Entering a new setting is not just about survival. It is about rediscovering oneself.

This piece explores that process: the social imprint of migration on the individual, the identity crisis it provokes, and the emergence of a new kind of global human shaped by displacement.

For many, migration seems like nothing more than a physical relocation. Yet in reality, it leaves deep marks on one’s sense of self, social ties, family structures, and value systems. Every migration is a kind of fragmentation not only a separation from land, but from familiar voices, scents, and languages. In other words, a separation from oneself.

Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, in his concept of “liquid modernity”, notes that modern life is defined by constant movement and change and that the act of “putting down roots” has become a rare luxury.

Migration shakes the foundations of social identity, because a person is formed through recognition within a community. When entering a new country and a new system, individuals must reconstruct their social roles, their status, and ultimately their sense of self.
This is often an invisible, yet deeply unsettling process.
For instance, a highly skilled professional may be seen as a “respected expert” in their home country, but becomes simply a “foreigner” elsewhere.
This transition not only alters one’s social standing but also reshapes how one perceives themselves laying the groundwork for an identity crisis.

For migrants, the idea of “home” gradually transforms.
Home becomes less of a physical space and more a fragment of memory.
Some studies describe migrants as living with “two homes”, one where they physically reside, and another where they emotionally belong.
This duality creates a constant sense of fragmentation: one is never fully here, nor entirely there.

When a person leaves, they part not only from their homeland but from their language, history, and the social mirrors that reflect who they are.
This separation forces them to reintroduce themselves in a new environment but recognition is rarely mutual.
As migrants try to explain who they are, societies often read them only through the lens of “where they are from”.

Sociologist Stuart Hall described identity as “a process in motion — constantly being redefined.”
For migrants, this fluidity takes its most intense form.
In their homeland, they are seen as “those who left,” while in their new country, they are “foreigners.”
This double displacement creates an inner fragmentation. The question “Who am I?” no longer finds a simple biographical answer.

Language is one of the most powerful markers of this fracture. Migrants often find that the emotions they once expressed effortlessly in their native tongue cannot be fully translated into their new language.
A language is more than words. It is cultural memory, an emotional architecture. To lose a language is, in a sense, to lose the ability to feel in familiar ways. That is why many migrants insist on speaking their native tongue at home, urging their children to “at least speak it here.”
Yet reality intervenes the children begin to think in another language, live by new cultural codes, and slowly drift away from the emotional wavelength of their parents’ world.

Cultural memory, too, fades within this tension. Festivals, customs, and social norms often appear strange, outdated, or even amusing within a new society. Migrants are caught between preservation and adaptation — trying to protect their values while learning to belong. In doing so, they often construct a “masked self”: a public identity that fits the new society, and a private one that holds what remains of the old.

Migration, then, is not merely a social phenomenon but also a moral and emotional upheaval. The harder one tries to hold onto their roots, the more difficult it becomes to sink into new soil. They are neither fully who they were, nor entirely who they have become. This in-between state (this identity crisis) has become one of the most silent yet widespread human experiences of the modern world.

The identity crisis born out of migration is, paradoxically, also the birth of a new self. In today’s world, people are no longer bound entirely to a single nation, culture, or system of values. Amid technology, digital connections, and the borderless flow of information, individuals build their identities not from one center, but from the intersections of multiple cultures, languages, and experiences. Sociologists describe this as transnational identity:living in one place while thinking in another. Speaking one language but feeling in another; belonging to one culture while carrying the traces of another.

As Zygmunt Bauman wrote, modern individuals carry “liquid identities”. Fluid, ever-changing, adaptable.
This flexibility can feel liberating: one can choose their culture, adopt a new language, and express their existence wherever they wish.
Yet it also brings a deep sense of rootlessness.
The question “Where are you from?” no longer has a single answer, because one belongs partly everywhere and fully nowhere.

Among younger generations of migrants, this condition often manifests as cultural hybridity. They embody both the emotional memory of their old culture and the social behavior of their new one. In their clothes, speech, and interactions, this mix has become the “new normal.” Where difference once meant alienation, today it signifies richness an identity asset in itself.

This transformation is reshaping societies, too.
The migrant identity is no longer just a personal experience. It has become part of the global cultural fabric. Communities are slowly moving away from the idea of a single, fixed identity toward more layered, open models of belonging. Where assimilation (the complete absorption of migrants into a dominant culture) was once the goal, integration and multiculturalism now define the modern vision of coexistence.

This transformation reveals a profound truth. Both personal and social: identity is no longer fixed. It is in constant motion. The modern human has become, in many ways, a citizen of the world with roots in one place, and branches reaching everywhere. It is both a strength and a void. A strength, because it nurtures the ability to think across cultures. A void, because the sense of “home” and “we” grows increasingly virtual, fleeting, and fragile.

Ultimately, migration is no longer just a form of social mobility. It has become a way of being in the modern world. Through this journey, the individual both loses and rediscovers themselves.
From within the crisis of identity emerges a new kind of global self, one that sometimes looks back with nostalgia, and sometimes forward with a sense of freedom. Perhaps this is the quiet truth of our time: humanity is learning not to live in one place, but in many.