Emigration or migration?
emigration is a noun meaning “The act of emigrating; movement of a person or persons out of a country or…”; migration is a noun meaning “An instance of moving to live in another place for a while”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) migration is about 7.8 times as common as emigration.
What is the difference between emigration and migration?
| emigration | migration | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun | noun |
| Meaning | The act of emigrating; movement of a person or persons out of a country or national region, for the purpose of permanent relocation of residence A body of emigrants; emigrants collectively | An instance of moving to live in another place for a while Seasonal moving of animals, as mammals, birds or fish, especially between breeding and non-breeding areas |
| Example | the Irish emigration | The migration of lead from a can to the food inside it can cause lead poisoning |
| Forms | emigrations | migrations |
| Pronunciation | not recorded | /maɪˈɡɹeɪʃ(ə)n/ |
| In writing | 1.8 times per million words | 14 times per million words |
Sources: emigration and migration in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of emigration and migration
emigration
- 1
The act of emigrating; movement of a person or persons out of a country or national region, for the purpose of permanent relocation of residence
- 2
A body of emigrants; emigrants collectively
the Irish emigration
migration
- 1
An instance of moving to live in another place for a while
- 2
Seasonal moving of animals, as mammals, birds or fish, especially between breeding and non-breeding areas
- 3
Movement in general
The migration of lead from a can to the food inside it can cause lead poisoning
- 4
Instance of changing a platform from an environment to another one
- 5
The movement of cells in particular directions to specific locations
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, emigration or migration?
emigration appears 1.8 times per million words; migration 14 times per million words.
emigration 1.8 times per million wordsmigration 14 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search emigration vs migration?
“emigration vs migration” is searched about 10 times a month on Bing (Google reports it together with close variants, so it has no figure of its own) in the United States.
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.