The global emigration landscape is a complex tapestry, with over 280 million people leaving their countries of birth in 2024. This infographic by Iswardi Ishak, using data from the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, maps the countries with the highest number of citizens living abroad. India leads the pack with over 18 million citizens abroad, followed by China, Mexico, and Ukraine. Smaller countries like Guyana and Samoa have over half their populations living outside their borders, a phenomenon known as the 'brain drain'. Conflict, jobs, and opportunity are major drivers of emigration, with 'push factors' like poverty, violence, and climate change, and 'pull factors' like better education, jobs, and healthcare abroad. The 'Migration Hump' theory suggests that emigration rates rise as countries transition from low- to middle-income status and drop as they become high-income. This explains the prominence of middle-income nations in the dataset. For more data-driven insights, explore the Voronoi app's related chart on the top sources of immigrants in 1995 vs. 2020.
