The decision to migrate: more than 2% of the world’s population are migrants and refugees

A week ago the world witnessed two events in which several human lives ended in the depths of the sea. In the early hours of Wednesday, June 14, a boat full of migrants and refugees was shipwrecked in the Mediterranean off the Greek coast of the city of Pylos.

According to testimonies, there may have been between 400 and 750 people on the ship, of which at least 78 were fatalities.

In another geographical location, in the northern waters of the Atlantic Ocean, the crew of the submersible Titan descended to explore the wreck of the Titanic, which sank on April 14, 1912. In its descent, the ship imploded and claimed the lives of all five crew members.

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Both unfortunate incidents portray in broad terms the motivations that each person has for separating from their homelands, since the experience of migrating is not the same for all the world’s inhabitants.

According to the World Bank’s World Development Report 2023, 2.3% of the world’s population are migrants and refugees, a percentage that is equivalent to nearly 184 million people. Of them, 20% are refugees: 36.8 million people, of which 15% are refugees in low- and middle-income countries and the remaining 5% are in high-income countries, according to the same statistics.

Refugees are defined as all those who, due to conflict or persecution in their country of origin, have to leave in an attempt to establish their lives abroad in social, economic and cultural conditions different from those of their home country.

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), a refugee is anyone “who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of his country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fears, is unwilling to return to it”.

On the other hand, migrants are all those who decide to leave their country of origin motivated by the desire to improve their living conditions, be it with a better paid job, access to another type of education, reuniting with their families, among other reasons in order not to lose the privileges and protection they have as citizens of their country of origin.

In the aforementioned report, people in this situation are presented as “economic migrants”, a term that covers all people who move to another country to work. According to World Bank statistics, 80% of the 184 million people are migrants (147.2 million).

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Migrants and refugees: these are the figures for 2023

Among migrants and refugees, the former, referred to as economic migrants, are about 40% of people living in high-income countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

There are 184 million migrants + refugees worldwide — that’s ~2.3% of the world’s population. On #WorldRefugeeDay, I recommend reading the #WDR2023, which highlights strategies for #BetterMigration to support development & sustainable growth: https://t.co/0u2YaoH0md pic.twitter.com/MLPNzdJm65

— Axel van Trotsenburg (@AxelVT_WB) June 20, 2023

According to the report, migrants and refugees in these countries are “high and low-skilled workers accompanied by their families, persons intending to remain in the country, temporary migrants, students, and undocumented migrants and persons seeking international protection”.

This 40% is made up of 64 million migrants and 10 million refugees. This proportion also includes 11 million people from the European Union who, because they belong to and move within the territory of the same political and economic community, are granted residency rights.

On the other hand, there are 52 million migrants and 27 million refugees in low- and middle-income countries, about 43%, who change countries mainly to find a job, reunite with their families or in search of international protection.

Finally, in the third group are the 17% of migrants, about 31 million people, who live in the countries of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) made up of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Generally, these people have a renewable work visa and represent, on average, about half of the population of these countries. An example of this could be witnessed during the celebration of the Qatar 2022 World Cup, a country that according to World Bank data had a population of 2.6 million people, of which 75% were migrants, according to the same statistics for 2015.

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