Oil, Communists, and Colonies: A Story of Migration
Visualizing the World’s Diasporan Populations
While researching my last two blog posts on the US-born diaspora, I ran across lots of interesting data about diasporas generally. In this (hopefully short) post, I will present some facts about the international stock of migrants, and show some trends that drive global migration. Specifically, I want to explore the variation in diaspora sizes and distributions.
For this post, all of my data comes from the United Nations Population Division’s International Migration databases. So thanks, United Nations!
Where Are All the Migrants Now?
The countries with the most foreign-born residents are wealthy, export oil, border conflict regions, or some combination of those. The chart above shows what share of a country’s population is foreign-born. That’s a pretty good proxy for the prevalence of immigrants in a society. As can be seen, there are basically 5 main clusters of immigrant-receiving countries (and a few others here or there, like oil-rich Gabon and Brunei):
- North America- Rich, peaceful, oil-producing, and geographically accessible from Latin America which is poorer, has experienced instability and conflict, and has just a few oil-producing countries.
- Western Europe- Rich, peaceful, not oil producing, but most migrants come from conflict-ridden North Africa, former colonial holdings, or the Former Soviet Union. I’m going to be returning to the colonial and Soviet ties in the future.
- Russia and its Periphery- Most of the foreign born in Ukraine and Belarus are Russians, as are some of the foreign-born in Kazakhstan, although in Kazakhstan, Tajiks, Turkmen, Uzbeks, and Kyrgyz make up the lion’s share of foreign-born. These countries all have large diasporas within each others’ borders due to their shared history as part of the Soviet Union and Czarist Russia before that. Authorities in Moscow actively facilitated Russian settlement in outlying regions, while Russian control enabled many in those outlying areas to form ties in Moscow and elsewhere. The final result was population shuffling and ongoing ties of migration.
- The Antipodes- Australia and New Zealand are prosperous, have received many humanitarian refugees, and while they don’t produce oil, Australia has huge extractive industries for other commodities.
- The Arab Peninsula- Oil, oil, oil. Seriously. A whopping 93 percent of the population of the UAE is foreign-born, mostly temporary workers with few legal rights from India and Pakistan.
Where Do Migrants Come From?
Former Soviet states, Latin America, and small nations have the largest diasporas relative to population. The above chart shows the number of people born in a given country but living outside its borders as a percent of that country’s resident population.
Let’s dispel a myth here: when we talk about migration, and countries experiencing major outflows, we’re not talking about Nigeria, or India, Or Indonesia, or Tanzania, or Kenya, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or Argentina, or Brazil. Talking about the economic consequences of out-migration means talking about Central America, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and micro-nations or enclaves. The top 10 countries with the relatively largest diasporas (thus the most historic out-migration) are Niue, Montserrat, Tokelau, Monaco, the Cook Islands, Dominica, West Bank/Palestine, Samoa, Antigua and Barbuda, and the Caribbean Netherlands. After the West Bank, the next country with over a million inhabitants to show up is Puerto Rico at 21st, then Jamaica at 25th, Albania at 26th, Bosnia at 27th, Trinidad and Tobago at 36th, Armenia at 39th, etc. Little countries, by geographic destiny, experience significant out-migration.
If we assume that individuals’ preferences for careers, climate, and amenities are randomly distributed, and that a country’s ability to provide for different preferences is correlated with geographic size or population, then we will always find higher out-migration by small countries and higher in-migration in big countries, even if there were no inequality in income around the globe.
Which Countries Have Received More Migrants Than They Lost?
By combining the two charts above, we can see the shape of migration around the globe. International migration is very lopsided: there are not very many countries that have large diasporas and large foreign-born populations. This lopsidedness shows that, while “circular” or “networked” flows of migration do exist, international migration remains mostly a one-way street.
The exception is in the Former Soviet Union. Former Soviet countries have roughly-even net balances, showing that they have large and reciprocal diasporas. The presence of mutual diasporas can create serious political tensions (especially with Russia’s asserted duty to protect Russians), but it also testifies to the remarkable linkages these economies share.
The only other countries with both large diasporas and large foreign born populations are Brunei and New Zealand: New Zealand as the “small” country alongside Australia, Brunei as an oil-rich enclave within Malaysia with odd migration flows.
Which Countries Have the Most Scattered Diasporas?
The above map takes some explaining. I use a measure called a “Herfindahl Index.” This is a standard index used to measure the degree of concentration in markets, especially for anti-trust cases. But more broadly, this index measures the degree to which a given distribution is very concentrated or not as concentrated. It runs on a scale of 0% to 100%. A 100% score would mean that 100% of a given country’s diaspora lives in one other country. A 0% score would mean that a country has no diaspora at all. Generally, higher scores indicate a diaspora that is concentrated in one location. Blue countries are the high-scoring countries.
Big, populous countries usually have more dispersed diasporas, while smaller countries have more concentrated diasporas. This is partly a product of statistical biases: big countries are more likely to show up in Census and less likely to be aggregated together. But big countries are also more likely to have diverse interests and connections abroad, and be home to larger diasporas, and thus their own diasporas will spread more widely. Small countries, meanwhile, tend to have relatively fewer ties abroad, so migration flows are very concentrated. Migration flows for small countries often concentrate along historically-established corridors, especially connected to former colonial powers.
So, for example, about 90% of the Greenlander diaspora lives in Denmark, the national seat of their monarch. The vast majority of the Equatorial Guinean diaspora lives in Gabon, next door. Most Kazakh diasporans live in Russia.
For other countries, concentrated migration flows can indicate extraordinary differences in income across short distances. Mexico and the US, Namibia and South Africa, Papua New Guinea and Australia, are all cases where local economic ties drive migration.
Sometimes these connections and colonial, imperial, or other ties of dominion overlap: Algeria and France, Namibia and South Africa, Puerto Rico and the United States all share both kinds of tie.
What Country’s Total Population is Most Dispersed?
The map above again shows a Herfindahl Index. But this time, I’m measuring the distribution of the total locally-born population. So, for example, 71% of the living people born in Albania still live in Albania, while 13% live in Greece, 10% in Italy, 2% in the US, and 4% in various other countries. For my Herfindahl scores in the last map, I only counted the percentage of the diaspora (so the 13%, 10%, 2%, and all the other minor countries). But for this map, I take the Herfindahl scores for the total population born in each country.
Large scale population dispersal is uncommon. Most countries have 85% to 95% of their locally born population residing within their borders. The countries shown in blue-green above tend to have smaller diasporas or, if they do have diasporas, they are highly concentrated. However, the reality is that the overall size of the diaspora swamps the effect of diaspora dispersion for each country’s index score.
Which Countries Have Both Big And Widely Dispersed Diasporas?
The map above multiplies the diaspora Herfindahl Index by the diaspora as a share of resident population for each country to give a “composite diaspora dispersion index.” Countries in blue have both large and dispersed diasporas, while countries in brown have either small or undiversified diasporas.
The only countries with large, diversified diasporas are former Warsaw Pact states and a few others here and there: Laos, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Suriname, Guyana… lots of countries with potential humanitarian refugee situations or asylees.
The dispersion of post-Soviet migrants is a product of the breakup of the Soviet Union and EU expansion. EU expansion has enabled residents of EU countries (including former Warsaw Pact countries or Soviet Peoples’ Republics like Poland or the Baltics) to migrate more-or-less freely within Europe. These new flows have led to a diaspora spread throughout the many countries of Europe, but not necessarily widely spread throughout the world.
Former Soviet countries and the former Yugoslav states also created diasporas overnight when Cold War era states collapsed. Suddenly there were millions of Russians living in brand-new countries. They lived within their homeland, the USSR, one day, but within Ukraine or Tajikistan the next. The same is true, in a most unfortunate fashion, for the millions of Croatians, Bosnians, Serbs, Albanians, and others who, after the collapse of Yugoslavia, found themselves in new and quickly-shifting countries.
Conclusion
Usually, I have a central theme. This time, I don’t. I just wanted to show you some maps, and point to some interesting factoids about international migration. Sometimes, “migrants” are created without moving because nation-states are redefined around them. Small countries are at an inherent disadvantage regardless of income, but the effect of a colonial history and global income inequality likely exacerbates the negative migration flows faced by many countries.
Read the next post, about kids born abroad!
Start the series from the beginning!
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I’m a grad student in International Trade and Investment Policy at the George Washington University’s Elliott School, and an economist at USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service. I like to learn about migration, the cotton industry, airplanes, trade policy, space, and faith.
My posts are not endorsed by and do not in any way represent the opinions of the George Washington University nor the United States government or any branch, department, agency, or division of it. My writing represents exclusively my own opinions. I do not receive any financial support or remuneration from any party for this research.
