Migration

Migratory movements in the Dominican Republic

There are some that have called the Dominican Republic as a nation of migrants.  In effect, before and after its independence, it has proved to be a convergence point for personal and public movements.  Its island character, its geographical location and its history have made it especially susceptible to becoming a point of arrival, departure and transit to and from other latitudes. Fortunately, as cyclically it has had to receive population groups that have become a part of the nation, this has also extended its view over the sea horizon that surrounds it.

This has been particularly accentuated in the last four decades.  In this period, according to the Human Development Report – Dominican Republic 2008, (PDF) the country has come to have a reduced emigration and a regulated, selective and seasonal immigration, becoming a space that is at the same time emits and receives, with an open circulation of people.  The changes that have encouraged this transformation are:

Modificación del modelo económico agro-exportador y de sustitución de importaciones, con poca competitividad y esquemas rígidos y específicos de apertura a los mercados internacionales, en una economía de servicios cada vez más competitiva y abierta al exterior. Al mismo tiempo, incapacidad de este modelo económico para satisfacer las necesidades y demandas de toda la población.

• Modification of the economic model of agro-exporter and import substitution, with little competitiveness and rigid and specific schemes for opening the international markets, to a service economy ever more competitive and open to the exterior. At the same time, inability of this economic model to satisfy the needs and demands of the entire population. 
  
• Movement of society from rural to urban.
  
• Evolution of the political system, previously authoritarian and dictatorial, to a perfectible system of representative democracy.
  
• Obviously, global economic, social, political, scientific and technological transformations that have allowed, encouraged and facilitated people’s mobility throughout the globe.

As a function of the migration data evaluation by the UNDP in its Report, “an ascending cycle of net emission of the population” is seen, that is, there is a higher index of emigration than of registered immigration.