Global population movements from 1990 to 2023 (opens in new tab)

The Gulf states take in a lot of migrant workers, who have basically no labour rights there.

https://www.ilo.org/regions-and-countries/arab-states/united...

"The UAE hosts some 8.7 million migrant workers – equivalent to over 80 per cent of the country’s resident population – making it one of the largest foreign labour-receiving countries in the world. With Emirati nationals mainly employed in the public sector, migrant workers constitute the bulk of private sector employment"

I think people underestimate how many people move back to their home country once they have a better chance (through e.g. education or money) and / or when the situation there improves (e.g. stability). It's why I don't understand why the anti-immigration parties don't do more internationally to help other countries.

Saudi Arabia has one of the highest immigration populations on Earth, somewhere around 42% contrasted against 15.8% in the US (which is an all-time high). They offer huge wages for pretty much everything, have dirt cheap living costs, and like many Mideast countries - there's no taxes for individuals.

Isn't migration to MENA - specifically migration to North Africa mainly from Sub-Saharan part of Africa?

> Fascinating to see that MENA is a net positive on migration.

Really? it's a big economical hub now, the bulk of it migrate to a few countries, and in these countries just a few cities. It's a very different type of migration too.

https://www.iom.int/sites/g/files/tmzbdl2616/files/2018-07/M...

If you pick 2023/2024 and the UK, you can see the disaster that is the Boris Wave.

That tool could be interesting if there was a way to stop the rendered globe from spinning. As is, it is unusable

Thanks! We'll put that link in the toptext as well.

"fleeing" and "replaced" are loaded terms, I don't think you can derive that from this data. That said, there's a lot of workers being imported from Asia to the middle-east for their ambitious construction projects, could that explain it?

> Meanwhile the middle-east population is fleeing and being replaced with asians?

Persians brought Hinduism to India, so maybe they're returning the favour

At least in Argentina that is because it's not the land of opportunities it used to be in the late 19th/early 20th century.

None of these regions have homogeneous conditions that mean anyone needs to be replacing fleeing locals to explain these stats. Millions of migrant workers are in the Gulf, and many of them come from the Philippines. Millions of people have fled conflicts in other parts of the Middle East.

Internal migration has mostly saturated capacity all accross the region in South America

It'll take a while until anyone relaxes

Pakistan being “south asia” makes about as much sense as Turkey and Saudi Arabia being labeled “west asia”. Technically correct, odd choice for modern communication.

In America at least, all the hot deserty places between Europe and India=Middle East. I only started hearing the term "South Asia" to refer to places like Pakistan after encountering more non-Americans online. Afghanistan is also considered as part of the Middle East to basically every average American (hence why it's lumped in with all those "Middle Eastern wars"), but I'm not sure if it's seen that way in other areas.

Probably because they have been getting closer to those countries, especially since India has started getting closer to Israel.

Bangladesh is Muslim though

There's a quote from one of the study authors:

  "Because previous estimation methods relied on coarse five-year snapshots, 
   they yielded very few data points and created the impression that the rate 
   of global migration flows was stable," adds co-author Guy Abel, a research 
   scholar in the Migration and Sustainable Development Research Group of the 
   IIASA Population and Just Societies Program and professor at the University 
   of Hong Kong. "Our annual data provides a clearer picture, revealing that 
   this rate has actually risen since 2000. This upward trend appears to be 
   driven by long-term demographic shifts and economic development rather than 
   sudden, isolated crises."

So if I'm following correctly, when you look at coarse data, you miss a lot of the smaller-scale migration, and that small-scale migration pushes the totals up a lot?

US had net negative migration in 2025 for the first time in decades:

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/01/14/immigra...

> interesting

You have a funny way of spelling "sad" my friend.

> This outflow can influence this data

Influence how? Migrations from wealthy to poor regions are still migrations, no?

The graphic seems vague and not particularly revealing.

???

Data quality issues usually get worse the further back you go.

Options -> change projection helps a little bit.