Emigrants vs. Immigrants vs. Migrants

Emigrants vs. Immigrants vs. Migrants Emigrants vs. Immigrants vs. Migrants Emigrants vs. Immigrants vs. Migrants By Mark Nichol What’s the difference between an emigrant and an immigrant, and where do migrants fit in? The answer, for both questions, is that it’s a matter of direction. Emigrant, immigrant, and migrant all stem from the Latin verb migrare, which means â€Å"to move from one direction to another.† The distinction between the nearly identical-sounding first two terms is that emigrant describes a person from the perspective of coming from somewhere else, and immigrant refers to someone in the context of arrival at his or her destination. Simply said, emigrants come from somewhere, and immigrants go to somewhere. (To help you remember which is which, think of emigrants as emerging from and immigrants as being immersed into.) Other terms for this phenomenon that include the root word migrant include in-migrant and out-migrant. Another synonym for emigrant, à ©migrà ©, usually refers specifically to someone forced for political reasons to leave a country; the word is derived from the Latin verb emigrare by way of French. There is no equivalent term synonymous with immigrant, however. A migrant, meanwhile, is a person or an animal who travels to and from two locations, as in the case of an economic migrant who leaves home to earn money in another country and returns periodically before going back to the other country again. (Migrator is an alternative.) Less often, migrant is used to refer to an animal that travels from one region to another depending on the seasons, as when geese in the Northern Hemisphere fly south for the winter as their habitat grows too cold and then return when the weather becomes milder again in the spring. Nouns referring to movement to and from a place, respectively, are immigration and emigration; the verb forms are immigrate and emigrate. Migration describes the process of repeated movement from one place to another and back again (migrancy is a less common variant), and the verb form is migrate; migrant and migratory serve as adjectives, the former usually referring to humans and the latter to animals, and migrational might also modify a noun to refer to back-and-forth movements of humans or animals. Check out our latest YouTube video: Wether, Whether, Weather Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Misused Words category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:How to Format a US Business LetterSelect vs. SelectedHow to Address Your Elders, Your Doctor, Young Children... and Your CEO