1. What is the meaning of the words “migration”, “diaspora” and “minorities” – For teachers

Scientific denomination, origin and use of the terms

The English word “migration” derives from the Latin verb migrare, meaning “to move from one place to another.”
Human migrations fall into several broad categories. First, internal and international migration may be distinguished. Within any country there are movements of individuals and families from one area to another (for example, from rural areas to the cities),  this is distinct from movements from one country to another. Second, migration may be voluntary or forced. Most voluntary migration, whether internal or external, is undertaken in search of better economic opportunities or housing. Forced migrations usually involve people who have been expelled by governments during war or other political upheavals or those who have been forcibly transported as slaves or prisoners. Intermediate between these two categories are the voluntary migrations of refugees fleeing war, famine, or natural disasters. This concept is related to the concept of diaspora.
The word diaspora comes from the ancient Greek diaspeirein “To distribute”; it consistsof speirein to sow, “to scatter” like seed, and dia “from one to the other”.
The concept of diaspora has long been used to refer to Greeks in the Hellenic world and to Jews after the fall of Jerusalem in the early 6th century BC. Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, scholars began to use it with reference to the African diaspora, and the use of the term was extended further in the following decades.
In general, studies on diaspora define this term like forced displacement of groups that have as a common reference a shared culture. The basic feature of diasporas is the dispersion from a common origin. This may be, as in the case of the black/African diaspora, a common history and a collective identity that resides more in a shared sociocultural experience than in a specific geographic origin. However, most diasporas have maintained a relationship with the place of origin and between the scattered groups themselves. The groups of people who move often are a minority in the host country.
A minority group is a sociological category within a demographic. Rather than a relational "social group", as the term would indicate, the term refers to a category differentiated and defined by the social majority, those who hold the majority of positions of social power in a society. Minority, a culturally, ethnically, or racially distinct group that coexists but is subordinate to a more dominant group. As the term is used in the social sciences, this subordinancy is the chief defining characteristic of a minority group. As such, minority status does not necessarily correlate to population. In some cases one or more so-called minority groups may have a population many times the size of the dominating group.
Because they are socially separated or segregated from the dominant forces of a society, members of a minority group usually are cut off from full involvement in workings of society and from an equal share in society’s rewards. Thus, the role of minority groups varies from society to society depending on the structure of the social system and the relative power of the minority group.
A minority may disappear from a society via assimilation, a process through which a minority group replaces its traditions with those of the dominant culture. However, complete assimilation is very rare. More frequent is the process of acculturation, in which two or more groups exchange culture traits. A society in internal groups making a practice of acculturation usually evolves through inherent give and take, causing the minority culture to become more like the dominant group and the dominant culture to become increasingly eclectic and accepting of difference.
The term "minority group" often occurs alongside a discourse of civil rights and collective rights, which gained prominence in the 20th century. Members of minority groups are prone to different treatment in the countries and societies in which they live. This discrimination may be directly based on an individual's perceived membership of a minority group, without consideration of that individual's personal achievement. It may also occur indirectly, from social structures that are not equally accessible to all.

Sources analysis and comment
The first source, the map is very interesting because it is possible to look  at different routes from different African’s places. It is also very important for spatialize geographically migration routes.
The second source shows a present situation: a boat with North African migrants. During landings many people are found dead. Migrants traveling long distances by land and by sea with the hope to live.

Intercultural & interdisciplinary information
(History)
European Immigration to the United States
American immigration history can be seen in four epochs: the colonial period, the mid-19th century, the beginning of the 20th century, and post-1965. Each period brought distinct national groups races and ethnicities to the United States. During the 17th century approximately 400,000 English people migrated to Colonial America.[Over half of all European immigrants to Colonial America during the 17th and 18th centuries arrived as indentured servants. The mid-19th century saw mainly an influx from northern Europe; the early 20th-century mainly from Southern and Eastern Europe; post-1965 mostly from Latin America and Asia.
Historians estimate that fewer than 1 million immigrants came to the United States from Europe between 1600 and 1799. The 1790 Act limited naturalization to "free white persons"; it was expanded to include blacks in the 1860s and Asians in the 1950s. In the early years of the United States, immigration was fewer than 8,000 people a year, including French refugees from the slave revolt in Haiti. After 1820, immigration gradually increased. From 1836 to 1914, over 30 million Europeans migrated to the United States. The death rate on these transatlantic voyages was high, during which one in seven travelers died. In 1875, the nation passed its first immigration law, the Page Act of 1875.
In 1921, Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act followed by the Immigration Act of 1924. The 1924 Act was aimed at further restricting Southern and Eastern Europeans especially Jews, Italians, and Slavs who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s.Most of the European refugees fleeing the Nazis and World War II were barred from coming to the United States.
Until the 1930s most legal immigrants were male. By the 1990s women accounted for just over half of all legal immigrants. Contemporary immigrants tend to be younger than the native population of the United States with people between the ages of 15 and 34 substantially overrepresented. Immigrants are also more likely to be married and less likely to be divorced than native-born Americans of the same age.
Immigration from South Asia and elsewhere has contributed to enlarging the religious composition of the United States. Islam in the United States is growing mainly due to immigration. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism are other examples.
Since 1992, an estimated 1.7 million Muslims approximately 1 million Hindus, and approximately 1 million Buddhists have immigrated legally to the United States