As per the latest estimates released by the United Nations, India is 2019’s leading country of origin of international migrants with a 17.5 million strong Indian community based overseas. The report further states that the number of migrants globally has reached an estimated 272 million.
The International Migrant Stock 2019, a dataset released by the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs or DESA, provides the latest estimates of the number of international migrants by age, sex and origin for all countries and areas of the world.
What are the estimates based on?
The estimates are based on official national statistics on the foreign-born or the foreign population obtained from population censuses, population registers or nationally representative surveys.
The report said that the top 10 countries of origin account for one-third of all international migrants. In 2019, with 17.5 million persons living abroad, India leads the tally.
Other countries on the list
Migrants from Mexico constituted the second largest diaspora with 11.8 million
This was followed by countries like – China – 10.7 million, Russia – 10.5 million, Syria – 8.2 million, Bangladesh – 7.8 million, Pakistan – 6.3 million, Ukraine – 5.9 million, the Philippines – 5.4 million and Afghanistan – 5.1 million.
India hosted 5.1 million international migrants in 2019, less than the 5.2 million in 2015. International migrants as a share of total population in India was steady at 0.4 per cent from 2010 to 2019.
The report also said that India hosted 207,000 refugees. Among the international migrants in the country, the female population was 48.8 per cent and the median age of international migrants was 47.1 years.
For India, the largest source of migrants came from countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal.
Hosting migrants
In 2019, regionally, Europe hosted the largest number of international migrants (82 million), followed by Northern America (59 million) and Northern Africa and Western Asia (49 million).
At the country level, the United States of America hosted the largest number of international migrants (51 million), equal to about 19 per cent of the world’s total.
Germany and Saudi Arabia came at the second and third number respectively. This was followed by Russia (12 million), the United Kingdom (10 million), the United Arab Emirates (9 million), France, Canada and Australia (around 8 million each) and Italy (6 million).
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The share of international migrants in total population varies considerably across geographic regions with the highest proportions recorded in Oceania (including Australia and New Zealand) (21.2 per cent) and Northern America (16.0 per cent) and the lowest in Latin America and the Caribbean (1.8 per cent), Central and Southern Asia (1.0 per cent) and Eastern and South-Eastern Asia (0.8 per cent).
A majority of international migrants in sub-Saharan Africa (89 per cent), Eastern and South-Eastern Asia (83 per cent), Latin America and the Caribbean (73 per cent), and Central and Southern Asia (63 per cent) originated from the region in which they reside.
By contrast, most of the international migrants that lived in Northern America (98 per cent), Oceania (88 per cent) and Northern Africa and Western Asia (59 per cent) were born outside their region of residence.
Between 2010 and 2017, the global number of refugees and asylum seekers increased by about 13 million. Northern Africa and Western Asia hosted around 46 per cent of the global number of refugees and asylum seekers.