The Gulf now hosts a tenth of the world's migrants

Claim types Estimate

Estimate. UN DESA Population Division, International Migrant Stock 2024 (POP/DB/MIG/Stock/Rev.2024), total migrant stock at mid-year by country or area of destination, both sexes, 1990 and 2024, read from the UN DESA file via the progrss vault (§4.11, un-migrant-stock passes value_checks, 4 matches, 0 mismatches). These are UN DESA's own mid-year estimates of people living outside their country of birth (or of citizenship where birthplace is not recorded), a stock, not yearly flows; refugees are added for some countries, and where there is no recent census or register the UN projects or holds earlier values. Workers on short contracts may be counted only in part. Six Gulf states = Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain (the Gulf Cooperation Council): 7,762,573 migrants in 1990 and 30,624,600 in 2024. Shares are progrss calculations on the UN's own world totals (153,916,063 in 1990; 304,021,813 in 2024): 5.04% and 10.07%. The rise was not steady: the six states' share reached 10.94% in 2015 (27.4 million of 250 million), then eased to 10.18% in 2020 and 10.07% in 2024, as the rest of the world's migrant stock grew faster. The chart draws the 196 countries and areas on the progrss tile map, each square's area proportional to its migrant stock on one scale for both years; 35 small territories (1.2 million migrants in 1990 and 1.8 million in 2024, under 1% of the total in both years) are counted in the totals and listed in the numbers table but not drawn. Ranks are among the 231 countries and areas in the progrss copy of the file (the UN lists 233; the 231 sum to within 0.1% of the UN world total). The UN's annex notes that its 1990 estimate for Sudan refers to Sudan and South Sudan together while the file also gives South Sudan a 1990 value; both are drawn as the file gives them, and neither affects the Gulf figures. Borders are today's for both years (the UN gives 1990 values for the states that succeeded the USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia), so part of the 1990 stock in Russia, Ukraine and Central Asia is people who moved inside the Soviet Union before it broke up. No cause is claimed. Licence: the UN file states CC BY 3.0 IGO.