We explain what displacement is, what demographic displacement consists of and other meanings of this term.
What is displacement?
The displacement is understood as the movement made by a moving bodywhich moves from one place to another. People and most objects are capable of moving, which is the only way to change relative position in space. If a body is observed to be in a different place at two times, it means that the body has moved.
This first definition, which is given from physics, It is used to contrast it with the idea of distance traveled. Assuming a car traveling through the streets of a city, it can be illustratively exemplified: the distance traveled will be the total number of blocks it crossed, doubling the necessary times.
Displacement, on the contrary, will become the straight line that joins the place where it was at the beginning with the place where it is at the end. Because it is a line that goes from one place to another, when we talk about displacement we are referring to a vector. It will have a direction and a sense, and a module and a name that will describe the movement made by the body, regardless of the trajectory it took.
Displacements can be classified into:
- Positive displacement. It is the subsequent change towards a position other than the primary one, as we mentioned previously.
- Negative displacement. The one in which the body returns to the original position.
Different specifications are directly related to the study of body movements, and are also of utmost importance, such as:
- Path. It is the set of intermediate positions through which the body has passed during its movement or translation. In other words, it is the type of curve that the body itself describes when carrying out the action of displacement, of changing position with respect to a coordinate axis.
- Distance. This has the capacity to be measured since it is the scalar magnitude of the length of the path traveled by the body in its movement. Depending on the scale used to measure, the nominal result is different, but in all cases the distance is cumulatively positive.
- Speed. This is a magnitude that is expressed by the relationship between the physical space traveled by the object per unit of time. It is a rhythm, or also called “rate of change”, by which the change in position occurs for each unit of time.
See also: Speed
Demographic shifts
In demography, internal displacement is the movement of a mass of peoplewhen it stops being for individual reasons and becomes a collective act derived from a cause beyond its control. This is a group of people who are forced to escape or flee their usual place of residence, dispersing among several places or concentrating to live in the same area.
The causes of internal displacement can be armed conflictshuman rights violations, persecution, lack of job opportunities or natural or human disasters. The displaced should not be confused with people who have simply emigrated from one country to another or from one city to another, since the former have done so without the possibility of choice.
It is for this reason that These are especially vulnerable people.: they have abruptly modified the organization of their community, they have probably eliminated their main source of income, they may be subject to processes of anguish and depression due to the distance from their place of origin or their family, and if the family also is part of displacement, children's schooling may be lost or limited.
The fear of being persecuted usually persists, and It is common for displaced people to have no documentation with which they can demand that their rights be recognized. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) seeks to provide protection and guarantees to these people, who have been so badly hit.
Other types of movement
- In chemistry. Displacement is the phenomenon that occurs in various reactions in which a compound and an element participate. For usually electrostatic reasons, the added element can displace another element of the compound, thus producing its displacement, so that the displaced element is replaced by the new one, from that chemical reaction produced.
- In maritime navigation. The term displacement is used to talk about the weight of a unit in relation to its carrying capacity. It is, in other words, the weight of the volume of water that the submerged part of the boat displaces. The unit in which nautical displacement is expressed is the metric ton, and the calculation of the maximum displacement is carried out with the vessel ready to sail (including passengers, fuel tanks, safety elements, etc.). In addition to the maximum weight, the thread displacement is usually analyzed, which describes the weight of the boat completely empty. The difference between one and the other is the maximum load weight, and is known as dead weight.
- In psychology. Displacement is one of the defense mechanisms that consists of diverting emotional feelings to a substitute target. In the analysis of dreams it appears as an unconscious act of abandoning representations, sliding along associative pathways.
- Demography
