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RareCodeMonkey t1_j0zx8qf wrote

It is a weird comparison, at least for the European Union and probably for others, as a Norwegian moving to Sweden counts as an immigrant, even that the guy may be moving just a few kilometers. But a Californian moving to Florida is not accounted as migration as that guy stays in the same country. The same happens for other big countries like China or Russia were people travelling thru time zones and cultures ends up in the same country.

So, the map is interesting and correct, but it would add even more information to see kilometers travelled or some other metric that takes distance into account.

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curiossceptic t1_j112iwg wrote

Why is that a weird comparison?

Moving to a different country, with a different language, political structure, culture, history etc. cannot be compared with migration within a country.

Furthermore, distance travelled doesn’t necessarily reflect larger changes, eg California stretches over 1600km from North to South, yet you are still in the same state, speaking the same language etc. Traveling 200 km, which is roughly the distance between LA and San Diego, in Switzerland or Belgium will make you end up not only in a different subnational administrative division (i.e a different state) but also in a completely different language region.

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RareCodeMonkey t1_j12r44g wrote

>Moving to a different country, with a different language, political structure, culture, history etc. cannot be compared with migration within a country.

It is way more similar Sweden to Norway than California to Florida.

> also in a completely different language region.

Not really. The laguage is different but very similar as countries share history and until a hundred years ago any village would have been able to talk to all the villages around it indepdendenly of which country they were in. Language changed gradually from village to village.

Any Spanish speaker can read many words and sentences in French, Italian or Romanian as they share much in common. Swedish and English have a lot in common, Spanish and Portuguese the same, Norwegian and Swedish are extremely similar like Danish (even that nobody really understand the Danish when they speak).

Even culture in the South of Spain is more similar to the one in the North of Africa than to the one in the North of Europe, as there is shared history and both are Mediterranean locations.

In my view, Chinese and French are really completely different. Finnish and Swedish are completely different, even that they are phisically very close (but many Finnish people speaks Swedish because again they live close by).

Countries are administrative regions for legal purposes, but culture is more permeable than that.

You are right that migration between countries means something, I just think that it is misleading in many cases at least in Europe (and probably other parts of the world) as there is a strong shared history.

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Pepinorojo t1_j17qklu wrote

As a Spanish that have lived in Norway among many other countries, I couldn’t agree more. I can see a lot of “shared” values between Spain and Italy, France or even Netherlands, but I can’t see many with Nordic countries.

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