In the push–pull framework, a push factor is best defined as:
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Human Geography · Foundations
Push and Pull Factors
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Push and pull factors are the conditions that explain why people migrate. Push factors are problems at a person's current home that drive them to leave; pull factors are attractions at a Destination The location a migrant is moving toward, where pull factors operate. Full entry → that draw them toward it. Both fall into economic, political, social or cultural, and environmental categories. Between origin and destination sit intervening obstacles — distance, cost, borders, and laws — that a move must overcome. Everett Lee organized these forces into a single migration model in 1966.
Why this matters
Almost every migration story, from a graduate moving cities for work to a family fleeing a flood, can be read through push and pull factors. The framework gives you a neutral vocabulary for causes that are often argued about emotionally, letting you separate what drives people out of a place from what draws them to another and weigh the obstacles in between. In geography courses it links population, development, and displacement, and it trains a habit useful far beyond the classroom: describing human movement in terms of conditions and choices rather than blame. It also teaches restraint — real migration usually mixes several factors at once.
The college version
Origin, destination, and the two forces
The push–pull framework answers a single question: why do people move? It splits the reasons into two mirrored sets tied to two places. Push factors are conditions at a person's Place of origin The location a migrant is leaving, where push factors operate. Full entry → that make staying difficult or undesirable and drive them to leave — a lack of jobs, poverty, conflict or persecution, a natural disaster, or land that can no longer support a household. Pull factors are conditions at a possible destination that attract people toward it — available work, higher wages, physical safety, family and community ties, or better schools and health care. The two forces usually work together: a person is rarely pushed by hardship alone or pulled by opportunity alone, but rather leaves one place because conditions there are poor and chooses a particular destination because conditions there look better. Keeping the origin–destination distinction straight is the core skill, because the same broad topic — jobs, for instance — shows up on both sides: 'few jobs at home' is a push, while 'many jobs there' is a pull.
Four categories of factors
Geographers group push and pull factors into recurring categories so that causes can be compared across very different places. Economic factors concern making a living: unemployment, low wages, or failing farms push, while jobs, higher pay, and investment pull. Political factors concern government and safety: war, persecution, corruption, or the denial of rights push, while stability, security, and political or religious freedom pull. Social and cultural factors concern people and belonging: discrimination, isolation, or the absence of family push, while reuniting with relatives, joining an established community, or reaching good universities pulls. Environmental factors concern the physical setting: drought, flooding, storms, earthquakes, and long-term degradation of soil or water push, while a milder climate, fertile land, or lower exposure to hazards pulls. A fifth, demographic dimension — overcrowding versus room to grow — is sometimes added. These categories are not rigid boxes; a single event such as a drought can be environmental in origin and economic in its effect when crops and incomes fail together. The International Organization for Migration frames the underlying causes as 'drivers of migration,' a complex, interacting set of personal, social, structural, environmental, and circumstantial factors rather than any single trigger.
Lee's model and intervening obstacles
In 1966 the demographer Everett S. Lee gathered these ideas into a compact model published in the journal Demography. Lee described every migration as shaped by four sets of factors: factors associated with the area of origin, factors associated with the area of destination, intervening obstacles, and Personal factors Individual characteristics and perceptions — age, education, family stage, and how a person sees a place — that affect how the same push and pull conditions are weighed. Full entry →. His key addition was the intervening obstacles — the barriers that lie between the two places and that a move must overcome. These include the physical distance to be crossed, the money and time the journey costs, national borders and the visa and immigration laws that govern them, mountains or oceans in the way, and social barriers such as language or fear of discrimination on arrival. A destination can be highly attractive on paper yet remain out of reach because the obstacles are too large; conversely, low obstacles (a short distance, an open border, a shared language) make even a modest pull enough to prompt a move. Lee also stressed personal factors: individuals weigh the same conditions differently depending on age, education, family stage, and — importantly — their perception of a place, which may not match its reality. Migration, in this view, happens when the balance of pushes and pulls is favorable enough to overcome both the intervening obstacles and a person's natural inertia to stay put.
A lens, not a law
Push and pull is a framework for organizing causes, not a formula that predicts who will move. Several cautions keep it honest. First, one condition can be a push in one location and a pull in another at the same time: a booming city's job market pulls workers in while the depressed region they leave is pushing them out, so the identical factor — jobs — wears both labels depending on where you stand. Second, real decisions almost always combine factors across categories, and people act on perceived conditions and rumor as much as on measured ones, which is why some moves look irrational from the outside. Third, the framework describes drivers; it does not by itself classify the migrant. Whether a given move is voluntary or forced, internal or international, and whether a person meets the legal definition of a refugee are separate questions handled by the study of migration types and of displacement. Used with these limits in mind, push and pull remains one of the most durable tools in human geography precisely because it is simple, neutral, and applies at every scale from a household to a continent.
Eli explains
The same idea, in plain words
Explain it like I’m 10
Think about why someone would move house. Some reasons make the old place feel bad, like there are no jobs, or it is dangerous, or a flood wrecked the town. Those are 'push' reasons that shove you out. Other reasons make a new place look good, like it has jobs, it is safe, or your family already lives there. Those are 'pull' reasons that tug you toward it. But you cannot just teleport: the trip costs money, the new place might be far away, and a country can require special permission to enter. Those in-between hurdles are called obstacles, and you only move when the good reasons are strong enough to be worth pushing through them.
Picture it like this
It is like a magnet game with a ball on a table. One end of the table is tilted so the ball rolls away (push), the other end has a magnet pulling it closer (pull), and a little wall sits in the middle (the obstacle). The ball only reaches the magnet if the tilt and the pull together are strong enough to get it over the wall.
Where the picture stops working
The magnet picture makes moving look automatic once the forces are big enough, but real people also decide for themselves — two people feeling the same push and pull can make opposite choices because of age, family, or how they imagine the new place. And a person is not a single ball: they respond to what they believe about a place, which is sometimes wrong.
Worked example
Consider a farmer in a drought-stricken rural area who moves to a large coastal city. Sort the causes. Push factors at the origin: repeated crop failure (environmental) and the collapse of farm income that follows (economic). Pull factors at the destination: construction and service jobs (economic), a cousin already living there who can offer a place to stay (social), and reliable clinics and schools (social). Now the intervening obstacles: the several-hundred-kilometer distance, the bus fare and lost income during the trip, and — if the city were across a national border — a visa requirement. Notice the same theme appearing on both sides: 'no income here' is the economic push and 'jobs there' is the economic pull. Notice too that the move happens only because the combined pull plus the cousin's help outweigh the cost and distance. Change one obstacle — make the fare unaffordable — and the same pushes and pulls might produce no move at all.
Key takeaway
Push factors drive people out of a place and pull factors draw them to another, across economic, political, social/cultural, and environmental categories; between the two lie intervening obstacles — distance, cost, borders, and laws — that Lee's 1966 model added, and a move occurs only when the pushes and pulls together outweigh those obstacles.
Quick check
3 questions here, of 5 in this lesson’s practice set. Answers stay hidden until you check.
The idea that barriers such as distance, travel cost, and border laws sit between origin and destination and must be overcome for a move to happen is credited to:
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A family leaves a region after repeated flooding destroys their home. Within the push–pull framework, this cause is best classified as:
Choose an answer, then check it.
Study tools & related lessonsYou’ll learn to · Common mistakes · Easily confused · Key vocabulary · Related
You’ll learn to
- Define push factors and pull factors and distinguish them by whether the condition sits at the origin or the destination.
- Classify migration drivers into economic, political, social or cultural, and environmental categories.
- Explain intervening obstacles and attribute the concept to Lee's 1966 migration model.
- Apply the framework to real scenarios, including recognizing that one condition can push in one place and pull in another.
- Evaluate the framework's limits, treating push-pull as an analytic lens rather than a deterministic law.
Common mistakes
Treating a topic like jobs as either a push or a pull, but never both.
The category is the same on both sides; direction is what differs. 'Few jobs at home' is a push and 'many jobs there' is a pull — the label depends on whether the condition sits at the origin or the destination.
Assuming push factors alone explain a move.
A push explains why someone leaves but not where they go; a specific destination is chosen because of its pull factors. Most migrations require both forces plus low enough obstacles.
Forgetting the intervening obstacles between origin and destination.
Lee's model adds distance, cost, borders, laws, and physical barriers. A strong pull can fail to produce migration if the obstacles are too large to overcome.
Using push-pull to decide whether someone is a refugee or an economic migrant.
Push and pull describe the drivers of a move, not the migrant's legal status. Refugee, asylum-seeker, and internally displaced person are defined categories handled by the study of displacement, not by the push-pull framework.
Reading push-pull as a law that predicts who will move.
It is a descriptive framework. People act on perceived conditions and personal circumstances, so identical pushes and pulls can lead different individuals to different choices.
Easily confused
Push factor vs. Pull factor
A push is a negative condition at the origin that drives people away; a pull is an attractive condition at the destination that draws them in. The same category (jobs, safety, climate) can appear as either, depending on which place it describes.
Push or pull factor vs. Intervening obstacle
Pushes and pulls are conditions at the two end places that motivate a move; an intervening obstacle sits between them and resists the move, such as distance, cost, a border, or a visa law.
Drivers of migration (push and pull) vs. Type or legal status of a migrant
Push-pull explains why a move happens; whether the move is voluntary or forced, internal or international, and whether the person is legally a refugee are separate classifications owned by the migration and displacement topics.
Key vocabulary
- Push factor
- A condition at a person's place of origin that makes leaving more attractive than staying, such as unemployment, conflict, or a natural disaster.
- Pull factor
- A condition at a potential destination that attracts people toward it, such as available jobs, safety, family ties, or better services.
- Intervening obstacle
- A barrier lying between origin and destination that a move must overcome — for example distance, travel cost, a border, immigration law, or physical geography; the term comes from Lee's migration model.
- Lee's migration model
- Everett S. Lee's 1966 framework describing each migration as shaped by four sets of factors: factors at the origin, factors at the destination, intervening obstacles, and personal factors.
- Place of origin
- The location a migrant is leaving, where push factors operate.
- Destination
- The location a migrant is moving toward, where pull factors operate.
- Driver of migration
- In the International Organization for Migration's usage, the complex set of interlinking personal, social, structural, environmental, and circumstantial factors that shape a decision to migrate.
- Personal factors
- Individual characteristics and perceptions — age, education, family stage, and how a person sees a place — that affect how the same push and pull conditions are weighed.
Sources & references
- Introduction to Human Migration — National Geographic Society (National Geographic Education)
- Introduction to Cultural Geography, Ch. 3.2: Migration Drivers and Impacts — Northern Virginia Community College (Pressbooks) — Barbara Crain
- A Theory of Migration — Everett S. Lee, in Demography, vol. 3, no. 1 (1966), pp. 47-57
- Migration drivers (thematic page) — International Organization for Migration (IOM) — Migration Data Portal
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Researched 2026-08-19
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