What is Migration for Humans? Historical Transitions and Factors Influencing Mobility

Abstract

Humans have built stable systems for their social lives, although they are animals in motion. Whether people want to settle or move might depend on their characteristics, such as personality and social psychology. This chapter outlines the historical transition of mobility in Japan and Europe, including mobility away from daily life in the middle ages and mobility for pleasure in the early modern period. Then, we introduce a web-based questionnaire survey that examined human characteristics influencing life space mobility, and the relationship between mobility characteristics and their well-being. Several factors influencing either the life space mobility or the subscale of well-being were obtained from the large-scale web-based survey. Ego-resiliency is the ability to cope with and adapt to situations, and it can be said that humans were migrating from place to place because they possessed this ability. The results of this survey showed that ego-resiliency affects both mobility and well-being, and the essentiality of this ability was reaffirmed. “Diversion,” in which people try to get away from their daily routines, was a key factor influencing both mobility and well-being. Finally, we describe the importance of diversion based on the outline of mobility and diversion in the modern period.