Forced migration

Forced migration (also called deracination — originally a French word meaning uprooting) refers to the coerced movement of a person or persons away from their home or home region. Migrating in the same country means the person is an Internally Displaced Person (or IDP). It often connotes violent coercion, and is used interchangeably with the terms "displacement" or forced displacement. According to Alden Speare, "In the strictest sense migration can be considered to be involuntary only when a person is physically transported from a country and has no opportunity to escape from those transporting him. Movement under threat, even the immediate threat to life, contains a voluntary element, as long as there is an option to escape to another part of the country, go into hiding or to remain and hope to avoid persecution." However this thought has been questioned, especially by Marxians, who argue that in most cases migrants have little or no choice. A specific form of forced migration is population transfer, which is a coherent policy to move unwanted persons, perhaps as an attempt at "ethnic cleansing". Someone who has experienced forced migration is a "forced migrant" or "displaced person". Less formally, such a person may be referred to as a refugee, although that term has a specific narrower legal definition.