10 Jun, 2017
Number of Potential Migrants Worldwide Tops 700 Million – Gallup Polls
WASHINGTON, D.C. 8 June 2017 (Gallup Polls) — After cooling off in the wake of the Great Recession, worldwide, people’s desire to migrate permanently to another country showed signs of rebounding between 2013 and 2016. Gallup found 14% of the world’s adults — which translates to nearly 710 million people — saying they would like to move to another country if they had the opportunity. This is up from 13% — or about 630 million adults — between 2010 and 2012.
Gallup’s latest findings on adults’ desire to move to other countries are based on a rolling average of interviews with 586,806 adults in 156 countries between 2013 and 2016. The 156 countries represent 98% of the world’s adult population. The analysis period overlaps the years of the European migrant crisis that began in 2015. The previous findings were based on a rolling average of interviews with 521,182 adults in 154 countries between 2010 and 2012.
While still not back at the 16% Gallup measured worldwide between 2007 and 2009, the desire to migrate has increased in a number of regions as global economic conditions have continued to slowly recover and as conflict, famine and disaster have driven people from their homes in some parts of the world. Desire increased the most in non-European Union countries in Europe, in Latin America and the Caribbean, and in the Middle East and North Africa.
Yet in other places, desire has not changed much at all. In all regions of Asia, for example, the percentage of adults who would like to move to another country permanently remained flat. The 10% of adults in Northern America — the U.S. and Canada together — who would like to migrate also was unchanged. And in sub-Saharan Africa, where residents remain the most likely worldwide to express the desire to migrate permanently, desire hovered near 30%.
In 31 countries and areas throughout the world, at least three in 10 adults say they would like to move permanently to another country if they could. These countries and areas are found in every region except Asia, Oceania and Northern America. In many of these populations, desire to migrate has increased significantly, likely pushed higher for a host of reasons — for example, the civil war in Syria, chronic high unemployment rates in Albania and Italy, and the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone.
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