Mapped: The Countries Losing the Most People to Emigration

The Countries Losing the Most People to Emigration

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People moving in search of better economic opportunities, safety from conflicts, and improved living conditions is not a new phenomenon.

But by tracking which places are losing the most people by net migration (i.e., having more emigrants than immigrants), it often helps highlight consequences of economic and political developments in the recent past.

We map out the top 14 countries who had significantly more emigrants than immigrants in 2023. All figures are rounded and sourced from the UN’s World Population Prospects 2024.

Ranked: Top Countries By Negative Net Migration

Pakistan had a net negative migration number of 1.6 million people, the highest of all countries in 2023. Other Asian nations like India (-980,000), China (-570,000), and Bangladesh (-550,000) are also far up the ranking.

Listed below are all the countries who’ve seen a negative net migration of at least 10,000 people.

Sudan, located in Northeast Africa, also posted a net migration number in the negative millions (-1,000,000), due to an ongoing war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). A spokesperson for Doctors Without Borders recently claimed that civilians in Sudan were suffering “horrendous levels of violence.”

Broadly speaking, this dataset can be divided between countries where the migrants are moving for economic or political reasons (India, China, Pakistan) and those that are an active conflict zone (Sudan, Ukraine, Palestine). Of course many countries have a mix of both, with factors feeding into each other.

A glance at the top 20 reveals that regionally, Europe (mostly stable, high income countries) is underrepresented.

More From Visual Capitalist

If you liked this kind of content, check out Charted: EU Emigrants by Country, for the number of emigrants from 15 European countries.