How Does Migration Change Us?

Migration Affects Us All, Even If We Haven’t Moved.

Migration brings people from different backgrounds together.

Newcomers adapt to new surroundings, new cultures, new languages, and new ways of life.

Host communities adapt to new neighbors and the customs and traditions they bring.

Those left behind adapt to life without their friends, family members, classmates, coworkers, and neighbors.

These changes are part of moving. How we adapt to them impacts everyone.

In 2008, the city of Utica, New York, welcomed 450 Bhutanese-Nepali refugees who had been expelled from Bhutan in the early 1990s. Denied citizenship by Nepal, they spent 18 years in refugee camps before finally resettling in New York. Photo by Kathryn Stam