Migration flows across the world

January 25, 2013 12:09 PM

Peoplemovin illustrates the migration flow in and out of the countries of the world. Click on a country's name on the left to see its emigrants stream to countries on the right; click on a country on the right to see where its immigrants come from. Click in between the country lists to see information on top migration origins and destinations, and the largest migration corridors.
posted by ocherdraco (15 comments total)

1 person emigrated from Timor-Leste (East Timor) to Norway.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:18 PM on January 25 [4 favorites]

It's so pretty!

Watching immigration into the US was fun...trickle trickle trickle BLERRRGH MEXICO BLERGHH trickle trickle trickle. It's like watching something barf rainbows!

Poor, lonely little Micronesia. I'd bet a good half of those are Peace Corps kids. We lost a high school friend of mine to Yap a few years ago. I don't know if he'll ever come back.
posted by phunniemee at 12:20 PM on January 25

Why the near equality from Russian Federation to Ukraine and vice versa? Are all those folks seasonal migrants who go home again? Or maybe everyone thinks the grass is greener? Ok, maybe I should read the definitions of migration first...
posted by TreeRooster at 12:28 PM on January 25

The actual Excel sheet (with the numbers for every to-from pair) is here. Note that the number of incoming migrants per country is missing for some significant places, like Pakistan and China.
posted by theodolite at 12:30 PM on January 25 [1 favorite]

Places like Germany and Sweden are real melting-pots nowadays. I knew this, but it still seems to go against assumptions for some reason.
posted by Jehan at 12:37 PM on January 25

I don't get it. Who the hell moves to Saudi Arabia? Are they counting people who visit for the Hajj?

Seriously, I thought Saudi was one of those countries where you basically have no rights unless your family's been there for over 8 generations. Can you even visit for anything other than the Hajj?
posted by Afroblanco at 12:47 PM on January 25

This ties in well with Facebook friendship data.
posted by vacapinta at 12:47 PM on January 25

Seriously, I thought Saudi was one of those countries where you basically have no rights unless your family's been there for over 8 generations. Can you even visit for anything other than the Hajj?

Lots of oilworkers are over there.
posted by Jehan at 12:48 PM on January 25

2.2 out of 8.3 millions of Chinese emigrants moved from China to, wait for it, Hong Kong.

It makes no sense to include Hong Kong as an origin/destination "country" but exclude Taiwan.
posted by fatehunter at 12:55 PM on January 25

Afroblanco - Lots of domestic workers from Asia I'd guess.
posted by Keith Talent at 12:56 PM on January 25

A friend showed me this and I thought it was cool but kind of hard to derive insights from. Might be cool to arrange the countries in a circle instead of two columns. Maybe do some-grouping by continent or region, as well.
posted by PercussivePaul at 3:12 PM on January 25

Assuming it's close to accurate, it's interesting that it's only recently that Canadian politics has started openly showing signs of xenophobia at 21% immigrant population.

It would be interesting to see this redone so that it's based of that %/total population instead of absolute numbers.

(or maybe that's just the media I'm exposed to)
posted by Decimask at 8:28 PM on January 25

Yeah it shows population living abroad? Not yearly flows. For example Greece shows 10% of its entire population lives abroad (50% of them in Germany). But I don't think it shows when people become naturalized citizens of a country. Wish it was more clear what it is.
posted by stbalbach at 8:39 PM on January 25

Oddly enough, it seems that the second most popular destination for people from Greenland to emigrate to is ... Guatamala. After Norway and before, say, Iceland or Denmark.
posted by sour cream at 12:41 AM on January 26

Yeah, so, alphabetically is probably the worst possible order to use. If they ordered origins by amount of emigration, descending, and destinations by amount immigration, descending, you might actually be able to see some useful patterns instead of scrolling down so far you forgot what country you started with.

Pretty, but needs a few smacks with the Tufte hammer.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:41 AM on January 26 [1 favorite]