Monday, December 23, 2024

At 18 million, India has world’s largest diaspora population

The largest number of migrants from India are  mostly concentrated in the UAE, the US and Saudi Arabia. Other countries with a large diaspora population include Mexico and Russia (11 million each), China (10 million) and Syria (8 million).

At 18 million, India has the largest diaspora population in the world with 18 million people from the country living outside their homeland in 2020, according to a UN. 

According to the report the largest number of migrants from India.

are  mostly concentrated in the UAE, the US and Saudi Arabia.

The ‘International Migration 2020 Highlights’, by the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) released on Friday, says 18 million persons from India were living outside their country of birth. 

Some other countries with a large diaspora population include Mexico and Russia (11 million each), China (10 million) and Syria (8 million).

The  distribution  of India’s diaspora is distributed as follows: United Arab Emirates (3.5 million), the United States of America (2.7 million) and Saudi Arabia (2.5 million). 

Other countries with large numbers of Indian migrants included Australia, Canada, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar and the United Kingdom, the report said.

China and Russia also have spatially diffused diasporas.

Between 2000 and 2020, the size of the migrant population abroad grew for nearly all countries and areas of the world.

Other countries with large numbers of Indian migrants include Australia, Canada, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar and the United Kingdom, the report said.

 

India experienced the largest gain during that period at nearly 10 million, followed by Syria, Venezuela, China and the Philippines.

The US remained the country that received the largest volume of international migrants with 51 million migrants in 2020, equal to 18 per cent of the world’s total.

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).

According to the report the COVID-19 pandemic had disrupted all forms of human mobility because  of border closures of borders and travel restrictions worldwide.

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.

In most 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.

Currently, international migrants represent about 3.6 per cent of the world’s population.

Germany, Spain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States of America gained the largest number of migrants during that period.

UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Liu Zhenmin said, “The report affirms that migration is a part of today’s globalised world and shows how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the livelihoods of millions of migrants and their families and undermined progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.”

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David Solomon
David Solomon
(For over four decades, David Solomon’s insightful stories about people, places, animals –in fact almost anything and everything in India and abroad – as a journalist and traveler, continue to engross, thrill, and delight people like sparkling wine. Photography is his passion.)

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