Most international migrants don’t move very far from their home countries
Short-distance moves dominate global migration patterns. Most migrants don’t cross oceans or continents; they cross nearby borders, staying close to home.
If you were to leave your home country, how far would you go, and for what reason? Just over the nearest border? Across an ocean? Or to the other side of the world?
People often equate international migration with long journeys. But most migrants actually travel shorter distances, as you might expect if you put yourself into their situation.
Understanding migration patterns helps governments around the world plan for population and economic changes.
This article addresses a simple but important question: how far do international migrants usually move from their home countries?
But before we look at how far migrants travel, it’s useful to keep in mind that most people don’t move to a different country. 96% of the world’s population lives in the country where they were born. That means the people we’ll focus on here are a small fraction of the global population.
Two examples: Syria and Venezuela
Syria and Venezuela are two recent examples of countries with large-scale emigration, but for very different reasons — one caused by war, the other by economic collapse and political instability.
Since the start of its civil war in 2011, Syria has become a well-known case of large-scale emigration. By 2020, nearly half (48%) of all Syrian-born people — about 8.5 million — had left the country.
While we don’t have precise data on how far each migrant traveled, we do have reliable estimates of the countries they moved to. This data is published by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
As you can see on the chart, most Syrian emigrants have stayed close to home. The chart below shows Turkey, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia as the top destinations, with Turkey alone hosting nearly 40% of them. Overall, a large majority of Syrian emigrants — 80% — have remained within Asia.
Venezuela offers another example of large-scale emigration but for different reasons. Since around 2015, millions have fled the country due to economic collapse and political instability. The chart below shows the number of Venezuelan emigrants to their top destination countries.
By 2020, neighboring Colombia was the top destination, hosting about 33% of Venezuelan migrants. Peru followed with 17%, and Chile with 10%. These three countries account for roughly 60% of all Venezuelan emigrants. Less than 10% of Venezuelan emigrants moved to the United States.
Most people who leave their country stay on the same continent
Moving between continents is much less common than moving to another country within the same region.
Let’s look at the data from Asia, the most populous continent. Around 43% of the world’s international migrants were born there. When an Asian emigrant leaves their home country, they can either move to another Asian country or head to one of the other five continents.
According to the UN’s data, six out of ten Asian emigrants stay within Asia. More people are moving to other Asian countries than to all other continents combined.
The chart below shows the flow of international migrants from where they were born to where they’re now living. This data focuses on migrant stocks — the total number of migrants — rather than flows, which are the number of people moving in any given year.
Stocks are generally considered reliable because they are primarily based on population censuses, which offer detailed, countrywide counts every decade. While these censuses aim to include illegal migrants, experts acknowledge the challenges in fully capturing this population. However, in most high-income countries, illegal migrants are estimated to represent only a small minority. You can explore more about how these measurements are conducted in our earlier article.
On the left-hand side, you see where people have moved from or emigrated. These are emigrants. On the right-hand side, you can see where those people moved to or immigrated.
As an example, 41 million people have emigrated out of an African country (shown on the left). And 23 million have immigrated into an African country (shown on the right). As you can see by the thick purple line, around half of African emigrants — 21 million out of 41 million — move to another African country.
Asia and Africa are no exceptions. European and North American emigrants show an even stronger tendency to stay in their continent: 70% of European emigrants and 87% of North American emigrants move to another country in their own region. (Central America and the Caribbean are included as part of North America in this classification.) In South America, the share is smaller at 49%, but it’s still far larger than the number of emigrants moving to any other continent.
Why do most migrants stay on the same continent? There is no definitive answer because reasons for migrating are highly individual. However, some circumstances can explain this pattern.
Firstly, crossing borders can be hard because some countries don’t let people in without meeting strict conditions, and it can also be unsafe. Crossing fewer borders is often easier and safer. The second obstacle is cost: because travel can be expensive, many migrants can only afford to move to nearby countries. Thirdly, people might prefer places where they share a language or culture, have family nearby, or can return home cheaply and more quickly. Finally, many continents have regional agreements that make it politically and logistically easier to move between countries in the same region. Examples here include ECOWAS in West Africa or the Schengen Area in Europe.
The most frequent migration journeys are between neighboring countries
Another approach to understanding how far migrants move is by measuring the shortest possible distance between the borders of their origin and destination countries. For example, if someone moved from Portugal to France, it would measure the shortest distance between the Portuguese and the closest French border, which is just over 500 kilometers.
This measure should not be taken as the actual distance traveled but rather as a representation of the shortest distance between borders. It assigns zero kilometers for movements between neighboring countries.
The chart below shows these distances for all international migrant populations worldwide, again highlighting the total number of people living outside their home country rather than annual migration flows.
The most frequent migration journeys are short, with neighboring countries being the most common destinations. This is especially common in low-income regions of the world. For example, 39% of Rwandan emigrants move to border countries, as do 46% of Yemeni and 72% of Afghan emigrants.
The largest group of migrants — about 47% of the total — moves less than 500 kilometers. That’s about the distance from the Netherlands to Switzerland. The median distance traveled is under 600 kilometers.
24% of migrants travel between countries that are over 3,000 kilometers apart — about the distance from Ukraine to Portugal. Only a small fraction, less than 4%, move more than 10,000 kilometers, equivalent to a journey from Rwanda to the United Kingdom.
The fact that long-distance migration is rare today doesn’t mean it will stay that way. Travel distances have been getting longer in recent decades.
Even as the world becomes more interconnected, short-distance moves remain dominant around the world. Long-distance moves are becoming more common, but they’re still rare. For most people, international migration means crossing a nearby border, not an ocean.
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Simon van Teutem and Tuna Acisu (2024) - “Most international migrants don’t move very far from their home countries” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/international-migrants-dont-move-far' [Online Resource]BibTeX citation
@article{owid-international-migrants-dont-move-far,
author = {Simon van Teutem and Tuna Acisu},
title = {Most international migrants don’t move very far from their home countries},
journal = {Our World in Data},
year = {2024},
note = {https://ourworldindata.org/international-migrants-dont-move-far}
}
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