Migration, both internal and external, has been an essential part of the history of Ethiopia. Although internal migration has historically been fundamental in shaping the fabric of Ethiopian society, migration across national borders is nonetheless gaining momentum, especially in the last fifty or so years. What began as a trickle in the early twentieth century has now become a veritable surge. According to current estimates, over 2.5 million Ethiopians live outside the country itself. If we are to include second- and third-generation Ethiopian descendants, that number is likely double. The change taking place in Ethiopian migration at present is not limited to the scale, scope, or destinations of migration, although each is significant in its own right. This change also includes the nature of Ethiopian transnational migration, from what was essentially seasonal or transient to one that has increasingly become permanent. We cannot move forward in our understanding of this multifaceted phenomenon without undertaking a retrospective analysis, identifying lacunas and theoretical contributions that go beyond specific case studies.

Migration results from a range of different types of economic, social, and political changes. As a series of sometimes contradictory processes, migration cannot be separated from its effects and causes, which touch upon every aspect of human life. In the Ethiopian context, successive waves of internal and external mobility were largely a response to changes in the country's political economy: a fundamentally feudal mode of production was replaced by one that was socialist, which, in turn, was succeeded by a developmental stage that combined a market economy with an interventionist state. Migration was negotiated at every historical point, demonstrating coexisting and sometimes contradictory social conditions. To some, migration has become a central fact of life. At times, it has become an apt response to uncertainties, sometimes better than the unappealing certainty of staying put. In other cases, migration equates to expulsion, a coerced act resulting from pressures enacted by powerful macro actors, such as the state.

The Ethiopian diaspora is both extensive and diverse, and Ethiopia itself is one of the largest African sources of transnational migrants. Moreover, Ethiopia both sends migrants and receives them as a transit nation (particularly for refugee populations from Eritrea, Somalia, and South Sudan). These various migrations have implications for questions of nation-state building, ethnonational identity, socioeconomic development, gendered interactions, social stratification, and much more.