World Migration Report 2020

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In news : As per UN’s International Migration report India has the largest diaspora population in the world with 18 million people from the country living outside their homeland in 2020

What is migration?

Human migration involves the movement of people from one place to another with intentions of settling, permanently or temporarily, at a new location

An economic migrant is someone who emigrates from one region to another, including crossing international borders, seeking an improved standard of living, because the conditions or job opportunities in the migrant’s own region are insufficient.

Key highlights of the rapport

Who released it?

Since 2000, the International Organization for Migration(IOM) has been producing world migration reports. The World Migration Report 2020, the tenth in the world migration report series, has been produced to contribute to increased understanding of migration throughout the world.

Sources of migration data

The report draws upon current statistical sources compiled by 

• The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA)
• The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
• The International Labour Organization (ILO)
• The World Bank
• The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
• The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and
• The International Organization for Migration (IOM)

Perspectives on global migration

• As per the report, between 2000 and 2020, the size of the migrant population abroad grew for nearly all countries and areas of the world.

In 2020, 18 million persons from India were living outside their country of birth. Other countries with a large diaspora population included Mexico and Russia (11 million each), China (10 million) and Syria (8 million).

• The US remained by far the largest country of destination for international migrants with 51 million migrants in 2020, equal to 18 percent of the world’s total.
• According to the report, China and Russia also have spatially diffused diasporas.
• Germany hosted the second largest number of migrants worldwide at around 16 million, followed by Saudi Arabia (13 million), Russia (12 million) and the United Kingdom (9 million).
• Of the top 20 destinations of international migrants in 2020, all but three were high-income or upper-middle-income countries.

• The report noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted all forms of human mobility through the closing of national borders and halting of travel worldwide.
• Its preliminary estimates suggest that the pandemic may have slowed the growth in the stock of international migrants by around 2 million by mid-2020, 27 per cent less than the growth expected since mid-2019.
• The report added that growth in the number of international migrants has been robust over the last two decades, reaching 281 million people living outside their countries of origin in 2020, up from 173 million in 2000 and 221 million in 2010.
• Currently, international migrants represent about 3.6 per cent of the world’s population.
• Between 2000 and 2020, the number of migrants grew in 179 countries or areas.
• Gainers: Germany, Spain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States of America gained the largest number of migrants during that period.
• Countries with declined international migrant population: the report said that 53 countries saw a decline in international migrant population between 2000 and 2020. Armenia, India, Pakistan, Ukraine and the United Republic of Tanzania were among the countries that experienced the most pronounced declines
  • It adds that in many cases the declines resulted from the old age of the migrant populations or the return of refugees and asylum seekers to their countries of origin.
• In 2020, 63 million, or 23 per cent of the total international migrants population, at 281 million, were born in Europe.
• Birthplaces of the international migrants: Central and Southern Asia was the birthplace of the second largest number of international migrants (51 million), followed by Latin America and the Caribbean (43 million), Eastern and South-Eastern Asia (38 million), Northern Africa and Western Asia (38 million) and sub-Saharan Africa (28 million).
  • Relatively few migrants globally originated from Northern America (4 million) or Oceania (2 million).
• Regional migration corridors & COVID-19: In between 2000 and 2020, some regional migration corridors grew rapidly. 
  • The corridor Central and Southern Asia to Northern Africa and Western Asia grew the most, with 13 million migrants added between 2000 and 2020, more than tripling in size.
  • The majority of that increase resulted from labour migration from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka to the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)
  • The report noted that while it is too soon to understand the full extent of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it may have slowed the growth of this regional migration corridor.
  • In many of the GCC countries, tens of thousands of migrant workers in the construction, hospitality, retail and transportation sectors lost their jobs due to the pandemic and were required to return home.

Perspectives on India 

• According to the report, India has the largest diaspora population in the world with 18 million people from the country living outside their homeland in 2020
• The report says that India’s large diaspora is distributed across the United Arab Emirates (3.5 million), the United States of America (2.7 million) and Saudi Arabia (2.5 million). 
• Other countries hosting large numbers of Indian migrants included Australia, Canada, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar and the United Kingdom
• In 2020, 18 million persons from India were living outside their country of birth
• India experienced the largest gain during that period at nearly 10 million, followed in order of magnitude by Syria, Venezuela, China and the Philippines.

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