New Delhi: Not China or any other country but India topped the list of countries with the greatest share of migrants in the world in 2020, a new survey conducted by Pew revealed.
The highest number of Indian migrants were living in the United Arab Emirates, followed by the United States, that year, according to a Pew report.
Nearly 3.6 percent of the world population lived outside their country of birth in 2020, a new analysis of United Nations data and 270 censuses and surveys by the Pew Research Centre has revealed. The number of migrants crossed 280 million in 2020 — an 83% surge from 1990 — which surpasses the global population growth of 47% in the same period.
Economic opportunities were the most common motivation for migration, with Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, among other religious affiliations, showing trends of moving to a wealthier nation.
The Pew report also compared the religious composition of the migrants in 2020 with that in 1990. Most migrants (47%) are Christians, and Christian migrants grew in numbers from 72.7 million in 1990 to 130.9 million in 2020 — an 80% increase.
While Muslims constitute only 24-29% of migrants globally, the number of Muslim migrants increased from 39.9 million in 1990 to 80.4 million in 2020, marking a 102% rise. At 137%, this rise was the steepest in Buddhist migrants, from 4.6 million in 1990 to 10.9 million in 2020.
Hindu migrants, meanwhile, increased from 9.1 million to 13.5 million and Jewish migrants from 2.3 million to 3.0 million.
Another trend was people moved to countries where their religious identities were already well-represented. Christians often migrate to European countries, Hindus to the United States and the Gulf countries, and Muslims to Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Turkey.
For Christian migrants, Mexico was the leading country of origin, and the U.S. was their primary destination. For Muslim migrants, Syria was the most common origin country, and Saudi Arabia was their primary destination. India, meanwhile, was the leading country of origin, as well as destination, for Hindu migrants.
Among the religiously unaffiliated, the most common migration routes are — from China to the U.S. and from Poland and Russia to Germany. Buddhists typically migrate from Myanmar and Laos to Thailand, and others move from Malaysia to Singapore.
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India’s Christians 8 times more likely to migrate than Hindus
In 2020, over 3.6 million Indians resided in the UAE and 3 million in the United States, while significant numbers of Indians, especially Indian Muslims, lived in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as well.
Indian Christians, a minority religious group in the country, accounted for a substantial portion of India’s migrants, illustrating a broader trend where religious minorities disproportionately contribute to migration.
“Christians are a tiny minority in India, but given the large size of the country’s population, there are tens of millions of India-born Christians. India is one of many countries in which emigrants disproportionately come from a religious minority,” the report read.
In comparison to Indian Hindus, migrants were more than twice as likely to be Muslim and eight times as likely to be Christian.
The report said, “In recent decades, violent attacks on religious minorities, including Muslims and Christians, have been associated with a rising tide of Hindu nationalism in India.”
As a destination for migrants, India ranked 14th. India, however, was the top destination for Hindu migrants, who, in 2020, accounted for only 5% of migrants despite representing 15% of the global population. Nearly 22% of migrant Hindus reside in India, followed by 19% in the United States.
The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are popular destinations for Hindu migrants. Other common destinations for Hindu migrants from India include Gulf nations such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, where they often work on temporary permits, with many renewing them regularly.
Between 1990 and 2020, the number of migrants to India from Nepal (7,70,000) and China (110,000) have risen. On the other hand, “the number of Bangladesh- and Pakistan-born migrants to India has declined, as some who moved during the Partition have died”. Sri Lanka is the country of origin of over 1,90,000 migrants in India.
Historical events behind ‘fairly stable’ migration patterns
The report suggests that “since 1990, the religious composition of migrants has remained fairly stable”, noting historical and geopolitical events that have profoundly influenced migration patterns among various religious groups.
The Muslim migrant population experienced a decline between 1990 and 1995 as many Afghanistan-born Muslims returned home following the end of the Soviet occupation in 1989, the Pew report said.
Additionally, the Muslim population that migrated during India’s 1947 Partition aged over the decades, contributing to a decrease in Pakistan’s foreign-born population, the Pew report said. The Partition of India caused millions of Muslims to migrate to the newly formed Pakistan, which at the time included modern-day Bangladesh, it added.
According to the report, Jewish migration saw notable spikes during and after Israel’s independence in 1948, with another surge after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Over one million people moved to Israel from the former Soviet Union between 1990 and 2017, but this migration has slowed. The collapse of the Soviet Union also led to a significant movement of Jewish migrants to the U.S.
The implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 triggered agricultural unemployment in Mexico, driving millions of Christian migrants to the U.S.
The Syrian civil war, beginning in 2011, displaced millions of Muslims, who sought refuge in countries such as Turkey, Germany, and Lebanon.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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