50

South-Ea st As ia

Global Migration

60 70 80 90

A COLLABORATION OF IIASA, VID/AW, WU

Oc ea nia

Migration flows within and between ten world regions, in 100,000s

This circular plot shows all global bilateral migration ows for the ve-year period mid-2005 to mid-2010, classied into a manageable set of ten world regions.

North America
a ric e Am in t La
30
40
30 20 10

10 20 30

10
10

50

40

70 60

50 40

a ric Af

20

60

200510
12 14 16 18

Data Sheet

60 50
40 30

70 80 90 100 110
10 20 30

20

10

40

50

Key features of the global migration system include the high concentration of African migration within the continent (with the exception of Northern Africa), the closed migration system of the former Soviet Union, and the high spatial focus of Asian emigration to North America and the Gulf states.

110 0 10 90 80

70

14
50

100 110 12 0 13 0

60

40 30 20 10

90 80

70

60

As ia

r. Fm

io Un t vie So

West Asia

Unique estimates of migration ows between the top 50 sending and receiving countries
The bilateral flows between 196 countries are estimated from sequential stock tables (see overleaf for details). They are comparable across countries and capture the number a c i r e of people who changed their country of m A residence between mid-2005 and in t mid-2010. La
Me x
United States

The circular plot shows the estimates of directional flows between the North Ame 50 countries that send and/or receive at least 0.5% of the rica worlds migrants in 2005-10. Tick marks indicate gross migration (in + out) in 100,000s.
Cana da

occo

Oc ea

rki na Fas o

2 4 6

a i n

Af ric
a
ria e Nig
Zim e w b ba

30

20

32 34 36 38

40

10

2 4 6 8

Bu

Ct e

12

Egy p

2 4 6 8

V ie

Au st

South -Eas t As ia

d Mya nm ar Sing apor e

Tha ilan

tna m

2
2

ral ia

Gh an a

dIv oir e

22 24 26 28

42 44 46 48

50

52 54 56 58

Mo r

10

t S ou

a c i r Af

4 2

Indon

6 4 2

2 4 6 8

ed t i n U
10
12 14 16 18

o d g n Ki

esia
10

8 6 4 2

10

12

12

10

2 4 6
2

France

Malaysia

8 6 4 2
4 2
4 2

Netherlands

2
2 4 6 8

Switzerland

Japan

Hong Kong
China

18 16 14 12

12 14
2 4 6 8

10

Spain

108

6 4 2

12 14

10

Italy

40 8

2
2 4

264 2 2 2

ia d n I

20 8

1 6 1 4 1 2 1

4
6

10

Rus sia
Kaz akh s tan

10 8

4
4 2 4

Uzb e

Afg ha nis tan Iran

desh

Israel Bahrain

Bangla

For an online visualization of the estimates see www.global-migration.info or scan the QR code with your phone.

ou th As ia

1 16 8 14 12 10 8 6 4 2

28 26 24 22

an

18 16 14 12

20

Pak ist

10

8 6 4 2

4 2

Fm r. S

kis

tan

How to read the plot

United Stat es
20

Mexico

Each country is assigned a colour (Mexico: yellow); flows have the same colour as the origin

40

10

20

Credits: circular plots created with Circos (Krzywinski, M. et al. Circos: an Information Aesthetic for Comparative Genomics. Genome Res, 2009, 19:16391645)
Team at the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA,VID/AW,WU): Nikola Sander, Guy J. Abel and Ramon Bauer. Contact: Nikola Sander, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID/AW), nikola.sander@oeaw.ac.at

Total immigration to Mexico, coloured by origin country (here small [return] flow from USA) Tick marks indicate a countrys gross migration in 100,000s (here 4.1 mio in India)

In dia

15

ni
U

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

35

30

Total emigration from Mexico, coloured by destination country (here USA)

25

te

dK

Flow from Mexico to USA: no gap at origin, large gap at destination; the width indicates its size

ut
5
10

15

in g d

in

The large circular plot only shows the top 75% of all flows.

Origin and destination countries are represented by segments around the circle:

om

Note: The estimates reflect migration transitions over a five-year interval and thus cannot be compared to annual movements flow data published by United Nations and Eurostat.

a i s A t s We

25

30

35

in

40

ov iet Un ion
15

3 36 34 32

30 28

2 4

Portu gal Ukra ine

20

15
10

out

Europe
45

Philippin es

12

8 6 4 2

2 4 6 8

ny a m r e G

10

50
55

Europ e

30 20 10

60 70 80 90

sia East A

10

ut So

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30 40

10 20

30

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ico

2 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4

Br a zil

Ne

u Per d lan Zea

2

4
2

sia East A

6
8 0

12 1 14 6 1 18 0 2

rab dA ite tes Un Emira

22 4 2 26 28

2 4 6 8

10

12 14

2 4 6 8

2 4 6

i Saud ia Arab

2 4

2 4

Qatar

Syria

Jordan

Kuwait

10
5

in

out

The global intensity of migration

Our ow estimates suggest a stable intensity of global migration, with just over 0.6 per cent of the world population moving over ve year periods, 1990-95 to 2005-10.
Migrants in millions
40
35 30
0.6 0.8

The 20 largest country-to-country flows in 200510

Visualizing the 20 largest ows in the world in a circular layout and arranging origins and destinations by each countrys mean years of schooling* reveals a remarkably consistent pattern of migration to countries with higher education levels. The size of the ow is not proportional to the dierence in education level.
ean g m T oolin S h WE sc LO rs of a ye
Cte dIvo

Percentage of population

25 20
15 10
0.2

Sta tes

0.4

yeaHIGH rs ES of T sc me ho a ol n in
g

5 0
1990-95 1995-00 2000-05 2005-10
0.0

Mo
1990-95 1995-00 2000-05 2005-10

12

Uni ted

The circular plot depicts the 20 largest country-to-country ows (in absolute terms) in 2005-10. The origins and destinations of these ows are arranged by level of education, with Burkina Faso having the lowest mean years of schooling and the United States the highest. Tick marks indicate the size of the migration ow in 100,000 increments. Flows have the same colour as the origin country. It appears that most of the largest ows originated in Asia and went to the oil-rich Gulf countries and the United States. Exceptions to this trend are the ow from Mexico to the United States and ows within Africa (Cte dIvoire to Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe to South Africa). Malaysia and India were the only countries to be both receivers and senders of very large ows, highlighting the strong eect that migration and dierentials in education levels have on the redistribution of population.
* Estimates of adult mean years of schooling provided by Wittgenstein Centre Data Lab.
Origin Destination Mexico United States India United Arab Emirates Bangladesh India China United States Bangladesh United Arab Emir. Bangladesh Saudi Arabia India United States Indonesia Malaysia Pakistan United Arab Emirates Flow, in 1000 1845 1083 618 546 536 527 502 489 437 389 Origin Destination Flow, in 1000 384 373 314 311 289 283 273 258 241 238 Rank Rank

so na Fa Burki

ire
2

24

roc co
16

20

16

i Pak sta n
4

Ban

28

glad

esh
4

12
8

32
2

Rus
2

sia

Migration to, from and within ten world regions in 200510

The table shows the intensities of migration to, from and within ten major world regions in millions. In absolute terms, Europe was the biggest receiver of migrants (8.9 million over ve years), while South Asia was the biggest sender, with 8.7 million emigrants. In Africa and the former Soviet Union, emigration intensities were lower than within-region ows.
Region North America Africa Europe Frm. Soviet Union West Asia South Asia East Asia South-East Asia Oceania Latin America Moving into the region Moving out of the region Net migration by region Moving within the region 7.64 0.41 8.92 0.33 6.73 0.02 0.52 0.60 1.22 0.23 1.58 3.49 0.70 0.67 0.83 8.72 1.97 3.11 0.09 5.46 6.06 -3.09 8.21 -0.34 5.90 -8.70 -1.45 -2.51 1.13 -5.23 0.14 3.63 2.64 1.98 0.99 1.15 0.53 1.42 0.21 0.64
Mya r nma
28

Sing
2
2
2

e apor
stan

Kazakh

24
20

A Hong Kong S

India

16

United Kingdom

12
8
4

4
8
2
2
8

Malaysia
pines

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

11 Philippines United States 12 Zimbabwe South Africa 13 Myanmar Thailand 14 India Qatar 15 Pakistan Saudi Arabia 16 India United Kingdom 17 Morocco Spain 18 Kazakhstan Russia 19 Cte d'Ivoire Burkina Faso 20 China Hong Kong SAR

Philip

Tha

d ilan

4
4
4

Sau

in Ch

2
4

Sp

di A rab i

ain

one sia

16

12

12

16

b Ara ted s Uni mirate E

20

Ind

Mexi

co

Qatar

Zimbabwe

South Africa

10 Malaysia Singapore

Estimating a unique set of global bilateral migration flows

International moves are typically enumerated using either a measurement of migrant stocks or migration ows. A migrant stock is dened as the total number of international migrants present in a given country at a particular point in time. A migration ow is dened as the number of people arriving or leaving a given country during a specic period of time. Flow measures reect the dynamics of the migration process. As migration ow data is often incomplete and not comparable across nations, we estimate the number of movements by linking changes in migrant stock data over time. Using statistical missing data methods, estimates of the ve-year migrant ows that are required to meet dierences in migrant stock totals are produced. For example, if the number of foreign-born in the United States increases between two time periods, the minimum migrant ows between the US and all other countries in the world that are required to meet this increase are estimated. In the hypothetical example shown in Figure 1, the location of people born in Country A is given in 2005 and 2010. As we assume no births and deaths in this example, the stock of migrants across all (of the possible 3) locations in both years are equal (270+30+50 = 210+80+60 = 350). The number of people born in Country A and living in Country A (blue eld) decreases from 270 in 2005 to 210 in 2010. The number of people born in A and living in Country B (green eld) increases from 30 to 80 and the number of people living in Country C (orange eld) also increases from 50 to 60.
2005

Why estimates and UN flow data are incomparable

Ocial international migration data collected by national statistics institutes, and collated by Eurostat and the United Nations, are not directly comparable due to dierences in denitions, measurements and data collection procedures. In contrast, our estimates of migration ows between two sequential migrant stock tables capture the number of people who permanently change their country of residence over ve year periods. It is tempting to evaluate our estimates against ocial data by dividing our ve-year ows by a factor of ve to derive an annual number similar to that of ocial data. However, this is not a suitable comparison as the two measures capture dierent types of moves. Annual ow data sourced from administrative records or national surveys capture every move during the reference period, providing the duration of stay exceeds 12 months (the time criterion diers across countries). Our ve-year ow estimates capture migrants who changed their country of residence between mid-2005 and mid-2010. Figure 2 depicts the types of movements between three hypothetical countries that can be distinguished for people born in Country A. First, initial moves (a) involve people moving out of their country of birth; second, return moves (b) toward their country of birth; and third, onward moves (c) to a third country. Our estimates do not distinghish return moves (d) from those who stayed in Country C. They also cannot identify multiple moves (e) during the interval, where only one transition over the length of the period is captured. Since the ratio between one-year and ve-year migration numbers diers across countries, depending on how much circular and return movement occurs, there is no simple algebraic solution to comparing annual register data and our ve-year transitions ows
2005
(a)
Country A Country A

2010

moved Country A 270 stayed

We estimate the minimum number of migrant ows required to match the dierences in the stocks of people born in Country A. In doing so, we set the number of stayers, those who remain in their country of residence between 2005 and 2010 as the maximum possible number. In this simplied example, 210 people born in A stay in A, 30 stay in B and 50 stay in C. This assumption generates 50 moves from Country A to Country B and 10 moves from Country A to Country C, whilst maintaining the observed stocks in 2005 and 2010. This estimation procedure is replicated simultaneously for all 196 countries to estimate birthplace-specic ow tables, resulting in a comparable set of global migration ow estimates. Alterations are made to the original migrant stock counts to control for births and deaths during the period, using standard demographic procedures. These alterations allow our countryspecic net migration ows to closely match the net migration ows published by the United Nations. Further reading: Abel, Guy J. 2013. Estimating global migration ow tables using place of birth data. Demographic Research 28 (18): 505546.

2010

(e) (b) (c) (d)

Country C Country C

210 50

210

Country B

Country B

80 Country B 30 Country C 50

30 10 50
60

Fig. 1: Hypothetical location of people born in Country A

Fig. 2: Types of flows distinguished in our estimates using a hypothetical example for people born in Country A

Immigration (in), emigration (out) and net migration flows for 196 countries in 200510 (in 1,000s)
The estimates capture the number of people who permanently changed their country of residence over the ve-year period 2005 to 2010 and thus reect movements over a longer time period than currently published statistics. Country EUROPE Albania Austria Belarus Belgium Bosnia & Herzegovina Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Italy Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Macedonia Malta Moldova Montenegro Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia Serbia Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey In 31 214 60 215 20 34 37 45 241 109 4 73 752 1330 212 84 13 167 2007 0 0 43 18 5 7 18 297 171 93 316 42 1409 175 37 24 2412 318 306 112 Out 79 54 110 15 30 84 27 1 0 19 4 0 251 780 58 9 2 67 8 10 36 0 16 0 179 20 247 0 38 166 142 273 175 0 2 162 53 123 161 Net -48 160 -51 200 -10 -50 10 44 240 90 0 72 500 550 154 75 10 100 1999 -10 -36 42 2 5 -172 -3 50 171 55 150 -100 1135 0 36 22 2250 265 182 -49 Country Ukraine United Kingdom AMERICA Argentina Aruba Bahamas Barbados Belize Bolivia Brazil Canada Chile Colombia Costa Rica Cuba Dominican Republic Ecuador El Salvador French Guiana Grenada Guadeloupe Guatemala Guyana Haiti Honduras Jamaica Martinique Mexico Netherlands Antilles Nicaragua Panama Paraguay Peru Puerto Rico Saint Lucia Saint Vincent & Grenadines Suriname Trinidad and Tobago United States Uruguay In 386 1722 74 4 6 2 6 28 5 1392 101 20 119 0 65 139 3 9 0 2 5 3 1 1 2 2 123 11 0 28 6 0 1 1 0 1 1 6391 3 Out 426 700 273 0 0 2 7 193 506 293 71 139 43 190 205 259 295 3 5 5 205 43 241 101 102 4 1926 3 200 17 46 724 146 2 5 6 20 1431 53 Net -41 1021 -200 4 6 -1 -1 -165 -502 1098 30 -120 75 -191 -140 -120 -292 6 -5 -4 -200 -40 -240 -100 -100 -2 -1803 8 -200 11 -40 -725 -146 -1 -5 -5 -20 4959 -50 Country Venezuela Virgin Islands AFRICA Algeria Angola Benin Botswana Burkina Faso Burundi Cameroon Cape Verde Central African Republic Chad Comoros Cte d'Ivoire Congo DR Djibouti Egypt Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Ethiopia Gabon Gambia Ghana Guinea Guinea-Bissau Kenya Lesotho Liberia Libya Madagascar Malawi Mali Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte Morocco Mozambique Namibia Niger In 111 0 55 83 79 38 263 370 35 3 39 74 0 206 72 2 50 20 56 0 35 25 263 3 8 80 1 322 32 2 19 16 21 10 3 2 119 19 31 Out 71 3 195 0 28 19 387 0 53 20 34 149 10 565 94 2 393 0 0 296 30 38 312 302 18 268 21 21 52 8 38 116 10 10 3 676 138 21 58 Net 40 -4 -140 82 50 18 -124 370 -18 -18 5 -75 -10 -359 -22 0 -343 20 55 -297 5 -14 -50 -300 -10 -188 -20 300 -21 -6 -20 -100 10 0 -1 -675 -20 -2 -27 Country Nigeria Republic of Congo Runion Rwanda Sao Tome & Principe Senegal Sierra Leone Somalia South Africa Sudan Swaziland Tanzania Togo Tunisia Uganda Western Sahara Zambia Zimbabwe ASIA Afghanistan Armenia Azerbaijan Bahrain Bangladesh Bhutan Brunei Cambodia China East Timor Georgia Hong Kong SAR India Indonesia Iran Iraq Israel Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kuwait In 150 50 3 62 0 19 75 0 799 199 11 67 12 9 12 47 42 0 13 19 67 447 18 19 49 0 127 0 1 332 709 0 291 0 364 440 380 343 400 Out 435 0 3 47 7 151 14 299 98 62 17 366 17 28 146 0 126 899 392 94 13 0 2918 2 46 254 2021 49 151 156 3632 1276 474 149 90 170 177 335 123 Net -286 50 0 15 -7 -133 60 -300 701 137 -6 -299 -5 -20 -134 47 -85 -900 -379 -75 53 447 -2900 16 3 -255 -1895 -50 -150 176 -2924 -1277 -184 -149 273 269 203 7 277 Country Kyrgyzstan Laos Lebanon Macao SAR Malaysia Maldives Mongolia Myanmar Nepal North Korea Oman Pakistan Palestine Philippines Qatar Saudi Arabia Singapore South Korea Sri Lanka Syria Tajikistan Thailand Turkmenistan United Arab Emirates Uzbekistan Vietnam Yemen OCEANIA Australia Fiji French Polynesia Guam Micronesia New Caledonia New Zealand Papua New Guinea Samoa Solomon Islands Tonga Vanuatu In 0 0 87 55 696 0 0 0 81 19 184 33 0 30 862 1287 721 80 1 397 0 508 2 3077 7 19 77 1164 2 0 6 0 6 247 6 1 0 0 0 Out 132 75 99 4 610 0 15 498 179 22 31 2022 89 1260 5 230 0 110 250 452 296 15 56 0 525 448 211 39 31 1 6 8 0 182 5 16 0 8 0 Net -132 -75 -13 50 85 -1 -15 -499 -99 -3 153 -1990 -90 -1230 857 1056 721 -30 -250 -55 -296 493 -55 3076 -519 -430 -134 1125 -29 -1 0 -9 6 65 0 -16 0 -9 0

Team at the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA,VID/AW,WU): Nikola Sander, Guy J. Abel and Ramon Bauer. Contact: Nikola Sander, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID/AW), nikola.sander@oeaw.ac.at