Editbot renaming immigration categories

Question

I've been noticing in my history a lot of editbot recategorizations for renaming of immigration categories, mostly in the form of "Aish immigrants to B" to "Immigrants to B from A."

I'm concerned that this affects a large number of categories with a large number of profiles, the "new" names do not mean exactly the same thing as the old names, and these changes are not being reviewed in any way unless their managers see the edits and do so.

There are Swedish emigrants from Finland, Ukrainian emigrants from Germany, Lithuanian emigrants from Russia, etc. A persons nationality or ethnicity doesn't necessarily match the country they lived or were born in. In most cases a person would belong to both the new and old categories but there are certainly counterexamples.

I do think the new forms of names are generally broader and possibly more useful than the old ones, but the changes may not always be correct.

Comments

This immigration naming was approved a nearly a year and a half ago, but very little had been renamed so far. What you're seeing now is long overdue. You may have to look at your profiles and see what  you need to adjust. 

I understand what you're getting at, though, and understand the concern.

This is the approved structure: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Migration_Category_Structure

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If you find that the new category is wrong for your profiles (and I understand that this will happen and why), the solution is to move them to another (approved) category and contact the Categorization project if you can't find one that fits. It's a work in progress.

Answer 1

It looks to me like the new categories are more correct. For example, my husband is Colombian. If you were using the Aish immigrants to B, the category would be Colombian Immigrants to the United States. However, although he is Colombian, he immigrated from the Soviet Union to the United States. So his category would be Immigrants from Russia to the United States (I think it should be Soviet Union because that was what it was at the time of his immigration, but I digress). To express his ethnicity he would need to have a Colombian Roots Sticker or Latin American Sticker.

The category is being changed to show movement, not express ethnicity. If you were doing research, you'd want to look into Russian records, not just Colombian.

Comments

This is happening with the Sicily profiles as we speak also. EditBot is changing the [[Category:Sicilian_Immigrants_to_New_York]] to [[Category:Migrants from Sicily to New York]]

I am fine with the new structure but have a issue with the term Migrant.

People Immigrate/Emigrate (Depending on the context) and Birds Migrate from one place to another in the fall and back again in the spring.

In this case it should be [[Category:Emigrants from Sicily to New York]] as that is what they are Emigrants not snow birds heading south for the winter to Key West.

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The IOM, which is the International Organisation for Migration defines "migrant" this way:

You are hIOM Definition of “Migrant”

An umbrella term, not defined under international law, reflecting the common lay understanding of a person who moves away from his or her place of usual residence, whether within a country or across an international border, temporarily or permanently, and for a variety of reasons. The term includes a number of well-defined legal categories of people, such as migrant workers; persons whose particular types of movements are legally-defined, such as smuggled migrants; as well as those whose status or means of movement are not specifically defined under international law, such as international students.

Note: At the international level, no universally accepted definition for “migrant” exists. The present definition was developed by IOM for its own purposes and it is not meant to imply or create any new legal category.

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OK - My feeling, and I know I am not alone, is that these categories are reflecting a person moving from one country to another country - That is Immigration/Emigration (again Depending on the context).

Thus the names of the following agencies that would handle this in a few countries -

• U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) (part of Department of Homeland Security) - United States of America
• UK Visas and Immigration (part of Home Office) - United Kingdom
• Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada - Canada

What do they all have in common - The word Immigration - not migration.

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Lucy, the problem is that in your husband's case, if he had been put in the category "Colombian Immigrants to the United States", Editbot would change this to "Immigrants to the United States from Colombia" when the category is renamed, which would be wrong, not "Immigrants to the United States from Russia (or the Soviet Union)."

Perhaps in an ideal world, when the policy was written the old categories would have been deprecated with a prominent notice, new categories created and the profiles manually reviewed and recategorized correctly, rather than assuming they are the same and requiring the changes to (hopefully) be reviewed after the fact after the automated renaming.

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For the record, I renamed the categories and was aware that in some cases, they would not have the same meaning. I only renamed the categories. The profile managers got notice that the category was changed in their activity feed. If the new category is wrong, I guess one of their responsibility as profile managers is to try to fix that.

Note that when renaming the categories, I found that many profiles previously categorized under "Russian Immigrants to ... " were in fact for Volga Germans. There is no ideal world.

Many of these categories have a notice which I find prominent and it's often been there for a year. The profiles are still in there. We had reached a point when the renames had to take place. As I said before, if the profiles are now miscategorized, they can be moved to another category.

Here's the very misnamed Russian Immigrants to America category. This is one is not being renamed because the new structure works from entity to entity and won't allow for country to country migration. You are most welcome to help recategorizing these profiles.

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@Mike - the reason all these bodies have 'Immigration' in the name is because they deal solely with immigration i.e. migrants INTO the country.  They don't deal with people leaving the country.

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Hi Ros,

If countries had a department that handled people leaving the country it would be a department of Emigration

From what I am seeing in the g2g's I have read and some of the answers to questions I have posted is that the categories are being set up in a From (Country A) To (Country B or its lower level region).

The term being used as the leading term in the category is describing the people from country A and what they are doing, They are leaving Country A, the country of birth - They are Emigrating from Country A - The outcome is that they Immigrated to Country B. This is why the use of the term Emigrants should be used rather than Migrants. If a person Emigrates from a country it should be clearly understood that they Immigrated into another.

Yes, Emigration and Immigration are forms of Migration but so are Temporary workers and people going on Vacation and seasonal Farm workers that migrate from farm to farm.

The categories are being used to show a permanent outcome not a temporary outcome to they should lead with Emigration.

That is my opinion others may agree or disagree but it is the logical choice.

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Another way to look at it is Migration is a higher level term Immigration and Emigration would fall under that term along with other forms of migration. The categories in question are only tracking the emigration/immigration part of migration so they should use that lower level term.

Now I need to go get ready as I need to get going and migrate to work - TGIF! 

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the structure as it was explained to me in another G2G conversation is that Migrants from x to y is the landing category on profiles.  Migrants from x to y is a sub-category of Emigrants from x and of Immigrants to y categories.  So the Migrants from x to y shows where they came from and where they went in one easy sweep.  From denotes emigrant, to denotes immigrant.