Migrant Mother in the context of "Internally displaced persons"

An internally displaced person (IDP) is someone who is forced to leave their home but who remains within their country's borders. They are often referred to as refugees, although they do not fall within the legal definitions of a refugee.

In 2022, it was estimated there were 70.5 million IDPs worldwide. The first year for which global statistics on IDPs are available was in 1989. As of 3 May 2022, the countries with the largest IDP populations were Ukraine (8 million), Syria (7.6 million), Sudan (7.3 million), Ethiopia (5.5 million), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (5.2 million), Colombia (4.9 million), Yemen (4.3 million), Afghanistan (3.8 million), Iraq (3.6 million), South Sudan (1.9 million), Pakistan (1.4 million), Nigeria (1.2 million) and Somalia (1.1 million). More than 85% of Palestinians in Gaza (1.9 million) were internally displaced as of January 2024.

Documentary photography usually refers to a popular form of photography used to chronicle events or environments both significant and relevant to history and historical events as well as everyday life. It is typically undertaken as professional photojournalism, or real-life reportage, but it may also be an amateur, artistic, or academic pursuit. Social documentary photography aims to draw the public's attention to social issues or to the life of underprivileged people.

Florence Owens Thompson (born Florence Leona Christie; September 1, 1903 – September 16, 1983) was an American woman who was the subject of Dorothea Lange's photograph Migrant Mother (1936), considered an iconic image of the Great Depression. The Library of Congress titled the image: "Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California." Thompson was called the "Mona Lisa of the 1930s."

The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of natural factors (severe drought) and human-made factors: a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion, most notably the destruction of the natural topsoil by settlers in the region. The drought came in three waves: 1934, 1936, and 1939–1940, but some regions of the High Plains experienced drought conditions for as long as eight years. It exacerbated an already existing agricultural recession.

The Dust Bowl has been the subject of many cultural works, including John Steinbeck's 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath; the Dust Bowl Ballads of Woody Guthrie; and Dorothea Lange's photographs depicting the conditions of migrants, particularly Migrant Mother, taken in 1936.