Migration is here to stay

Gaia Vince's Opinion piece in The Guardian makes essential reading. I presume it will be in tomorrow's print edition.

Leaders should finally tell us the truth about migration: it’s here for good https://t.co/QChY5JO0y9

— Gaia Vince (@WanderingGaia) June 7, 2024

The opening paragraph is a useful summary for students of any age on human nature and the artifice of the border.

The state is an invention. 

It’s a bureaucratic tool of governance for an arbitrarily defined landmass; an artifice made convincing through emotive storytelling. 

Although many countries have their “long, long ago” symbolic foundation story, in truth the vast majority of them have only existed as independent constitutions for a matter of decades. 

We, the nationals, are the result of millennia of migrations of ancestral hunter-gatherers, herders, farmers, merchants, students, industrialists; of colonists and colonisers; of people invading, fleeing, crusading, exploring, roaming, slave-trading; uprooted for war, work, fortune and love. 

The dense interconnectedness of the human family, our genetic similarity, means that in terms of our biology, there are no different races. 

We can all claim ancestry from across the world.

Using the new Census 2021 mapping - a student guide

 

Thanks to Ahmad Barclay for the heads-up (once again) on ONS data and map releases from the Census 2021.

📈Big new data release today on #CensusMaps!📉
See how your area has changed over the past 10 years, right down to a neighbourhood levelhttps://t.co/mIj0ahCHBd
1/3 pic.twitter.com/RiBEdwmq9E

— Ahmad Barclay (@bothness) March 7, 2023

These maps are going to be very helpful for a lot of teachers and students. 

I put a quick guide together which you are welcome to use / download / distribute: 

Census data and maps are shared under an Open Government License.

Census 2021: How well do you know your area?

These quizzes were previously available for the 2011 Census, and are now back with data from the 2021 Census.

✨IT'S QUIZ TIME!✨
So, you think you know your local area? Now you can test your knowledge in the new #CensusQuiz and broadcast your scores on to your friends and followers on social media!https://t.co/yIf0YfMx6q pic.twitter.com/SHLuFnDw14

— Ahmad Barclay (@bothness) December 2, 2022

The quizzes can be embedded, which makes them particularly useful for teachers who can add them to VLE pages etc.

Age-Sex Pyramids

 A few issues with these of course, but this is a helpful video,

Population pyramid from Ined on Vimeo.

The population includes males and females of all ages.

To see at a glance how they are distributed by age and sex, demographers use a population pyramid. But, as you will see, it doesn't always have a pyramid shape. And how do we build one?

Crédits
Designed by : Gilles Pison et Sabine Belloc
Multimedia Project Manager : Thierry Jori
Produced by : SO2 Media
An animation of the French National Institute for Demographic Studies and of Cité des sciences et de l'industrie

Italy doubles its baby bonus

Italy is facing a decline in its population in the future.
As part of an attempt to encourage more births, the government is now increasing the payments that it makes to parents.

Just 488,00 babies were born in Italy in 2015
1.39 babies per woman, far below replacement level...

ONS Life Expectancy calculator