* Emigration to or from?

[natashahouseman]

Just starting to add some migration facts and sources into my tree.
I was really struck by the way the facts operate. Emigration is from, to, immigration to, from. Which means, in the property box, you see emigration from and immigration to.
I, personally, tend to think of them the other way around. I'm interested in where people emigrate to, and immigrate from.
I was wondering whether this was a British/American English thing, or to do with the direction of travel I am researching - generally speaking I am looking to trace ancestor siblings from birth to death picking up where they emigrate, rather than tracing a particular ancestor backwards to find which country they may have originated from.

Curiosity aside, I was wondering, if I just renamed the fact types the other way around, without changing anything anything else in terms of fields and sentences, would that cause any difficulties with gedcom exports etc?
Thanks

[BillH]

These are the definitions of emigration and immigration straight from the dictionary. These are the definitions as used in GEDCOM.

emigration
noun
em·​i·​gra·​tion ˌe-mə-ˈgrā-shən
pluralemigrations
Synonyms of emigration
: an act or instance of emigrating : departure from a place of abode, natural home, or country for life or residence elsewhere

immigration
noun
im·​mi·​gra·​tion ˌi-mə-ˈgrā-shən
pluralimmigrations
: an act or instance of immigrating
specifically : travel into a country for the purpose of permanent residence there

Bill

[ADC65]

If you do a search you'll find there's quite a lot of past discussion on these Facts. A number of people have defined their own Travel fact instead, the pros and cons of which are also available in past discussions. I find it easier as it avoids the very confusion/definitions you are talking about.

[BillH]

There really shouldn't be any confusion. The words have had those meaning for many many years.

Emigration Etymology. From Latin emigratus, past participle of emigrare (“to move away, remove, depart from a place”), from e (“out”) + migrare (“to move, remove, depart”).

Immigration Etymology. From Latin immigratus, past participle of immigro (“remove, move into”).

Bill

[ADC65]

Well, I'm not confused by the definitons of those words, and I didn't even need to look up the Latin, or even in a dictionary. I'd image the OP isn't confused either, so perhaps I composed my reply badly (which was directed at the OP, not yourself, in case you assumed I thought you were confused!).

I think the original point was that the OP's interest lies in where an immigrant comes from or where emigrant is going, and this is where I find a custom Travel fact helps, i.e, I tend to put "Emigrated from Southampton, England to New York, USA". You could put it in the Note of an Emigration fact I guess - as I said, there has been plenty of previous discussion about options.

[BillH]

I was just responding to the OP who said.

I, personally, tend to think of them the other way around. I'm interested in where people emigrate to, and immigrate from.

I wasn't meaning that you were confused, I just thought the OP might be confused. I was probably not understanding what they meant.

I do understand the usefulness of a fact like a Travel fact. I use two facts, Departure and Arrival, instead of Emigration and Immigration.

Bill

[natashahouseman]

Thanks all. Indeed I did ponder on meanings and read the discussion on travel (although not the Latin ) . I guess it was curiosity as much as anything else, My guess is it's my own family history circumstances that have led me to associate them in the direction I do. Or maybe it's just Yorkshire idosynchrasy. I still think of myself as having emigrated to London, a northern immigrant, rather than having emigrated from Yorkshire an immigrant to London.
And understand the use of travel but emigration/immigration still gives a sense of permance which travel doesn't for me.
However, it was an easy solve, I just switched the fact names around. As far as I can work out the from/to travels with the gedcom as from/to so whether it says emigration or immigration doesn't really matter. If anyone knows different from that it would be useful to know.

[tatewise]

I have moved this to the General Usage forum as it has nothing to do with Sources, Citations or Repositories.

The export to other products is an important consideration to maintain the correct semantics.
Also, bear in mind that the GEDCOM specification only defines one Place field.
The FH addition of a second Place field (just for those two facts) is a customisation that does not export well.

So if you swap the fact labels around in FH then the following will apply.
If FH says Emigrated to London then the exported fact will say Immigrated from London
If FH says Immigrated from Leeds then the exported fact will say Emigrated to Leeds
i.e. You have completely reversed the exported meaning.
That is because in FH the swap is just a label whereas the underlying GEDCOM tag has not changed.

It would be equivalent to swapping the Birth and Death fact labels.
The exported facts would always have people die before they were born!
In FH it would always be complaining about the dates because of that date reversal so it would never work.
Immigrate & Emigrate are life events so the dates are not a problem but the meaning is still reversed.

[natashahouseman]

Thanks Mike. That's exactly what I needed to understand. And appreciate the Leeds/London personal example! Need to ponder a little more on preferences now, versus compatibility later.

(Oh, and thanks to for moving it. I started in sources, because in my head, I was worried about passenger list sources, but then whilst writing, i solved the sources part. I am still surprised how beneficial just writing things down helps).