Total number of international immigrants

Description: People living in a given country who were born in another country.
Data source: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Unit: immigrants
Date range: 1990-2024
Last updated: 2025-03-12
Next expected update: 2027-03-12
Managed by: Tuna Acisu

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How did Our World in Data process this data?

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

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Notes on our processing step for this indicator

Regional aggregates (such as continents, income groups and the worldwide aggregate) are based on our definition of the continents and the World Bank definition of income groups, unless otherwise indicated. They might differ from the definitions used by the United Nations.

Documentation from data sources

Principal data source

International migrant stock at mid-year by age and sex and by region, country or area of destination, 1990-2024

Data sources

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs – International Migrant Stock

The 2024 edition of the International Migrant Stock dataset presents the latest United Nations estimates of the numbers and characteristics of international migrants around the world. Covering the period from 1990 to 2024, the dataset includes estimates of the total number of international migrants by sex, as well as their places of origin and destination, for 233 countries and areas.

In producing the 2024 edition of the International Migrant Stock dataset, the Population Division has prioritized revising the estimates for countries with new empirical information from population censuses or registers and relatively large numbers of international migrants, as well as for countries affected by ongoing or emergent refugee flows as documented by UNHCR. In the new edition of these data, a total of 60 countries and areas received a full reassessment of trends in the number of international migrants residing in the territory. For the remaining countries and areas, the estimates generated in 2024 reflect extrapolations of estimates published in the 2020 edition of the dataset.

Retrieved on

March 12, 2025

Retrieved from

https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/content/international-migrant-stock

Citation

This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data.

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2024). International Migrant Stock 2024.

How to cite

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Total number of international immigrants”, part of the following publication: Fiona Spooner, Tuna Acisu, Hannah Ritchie, Simon van Teutem, Sophia Mersmann, Marwa Boukarim, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Marcel Gerber, and Max Roser (2022) - “Migration”. Data adapted from United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261102-112946/grapher/migrant-stock-total.html [online resource] (archived on November 2, 2026).

How to cite this data

If you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Total number of international immigrants” [dataset]. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “International Migrant Stock 2024 - POP/DB/MIG/Stock/Rev.2024” [original data]. Retrieved November 2, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261102-112946/grapher/migrant-stock-total.html (archived on November 2, 2026).

All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately. This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.

All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

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