According to the World Migration Report, 2024, released in Dhaka on Wednesday by the UN’s International Organisation for Migration, India, Mexico and China were the top three remittance recipient countries in 2022, followed by the Philippines, France and Pakistan.India received $111 billion in all, the first country to reach and even surpass the $100-billion mark. In 2020, it had received $83 billion. Mexico, with inward remittances of $61 billion, was the second-largest recipient; in the previous year it had replaced China to occupy the second spot and continued to hold sway.
China’s inward remittances in 2022 were $51 billion. The contraction and its slipping to third spot has been attributed to multiple factors, including demographic shifts that have resulted in shrinking of the working age population and the country’s zero-Covid policy, which prevented people from travelling abroad for work. During 2022, India’s other neighbouring countries Pakistan (rank 6) saw an inflow of nearly $30 billion and Bangladesh (rank 8) received $21 billion.
The report points out that international remittances have recovered from the dip in 2020 due to the pandemic. Migrants sent an estimated $831 billion in international remittances globally in 2022, an increase from $791 billion in 2021 and significantly more than $717 billion in 2020.
Migration corridors: In 1970, there were just 84 million international migrants, which translated to 2.3% of the world’s population. By mid-2020 (per latest available data), nearly 280 million people lived in a country other than their country of birth, constituting 3.6% of the world’s population.
The size of a migration corridor from ‘country A’ to ‘country B’ is measured as number of people born in ‘country A’ who were residing in ‘country B’ at the time of the estimate. The Mexico-to-US corridor is the largest in the world at nearly 11 million people. This is followed by the Syrian Arab Republic to Türkiye and Russian to Ukraine corridors, attributed largely to displacement of people owing to civil unrest and invasions.
The India-UAE corridor is the fourth largest. An interactive map released by IOM shows there were 3.47 million Indians in UAE, followed by 2.7 million in US (which was the sixth largest international migration corridor) and 2.5 million in Saudi Arabia (in ninth position).
The report does not separately reflect the top source countries of inward remittances to India, but understandably it would be from the top diaspora-centric countries. US and Saudi Arabia were the top two in the list of those sending remittances overseas, with outflows of $79 billion and $39 billion, respectively, in 2022.
Net migration is the difference between inflow of migrants into a country and those who migrate from it overseas. For 10 countries including India, estimated net outflow of migrants exceeded one million over the period from 2010 through 2021. India’s net migration flow was (–)3.5 million during this period. Interestingly, India, which in mid-2020 had the largest diaspora of nearly 18 million (1.3% of the global population) occupied the 13th rank as a destination country, hosting 4.5 milliom migrants (0.3% of the global population).