Mapping Worldwide Migration

Flight & Expulsion is an interactive mapped visualization of worldwide migration based on data from the annual UNHCR Refugee Report.

If you select a country on the map you can view the number of 'arrivals' and 'departures' for any year from 1988 to 2008. The countries where a high proportion of citizens have emigrated to are shown on the map in green. The countries where immigrants have come from are shown on the map in brown.

The map is a nice way to visualize the migrant patterns to and from individual countries. However I'm not entirely sure about the accuracy of the data.


Spanish newspaper El Pais created a similar interactive map to show human migration patterns across the world. Un Mundo de Migrantes allows you to select individual countries and view where the largest number of migrants emanate from and which countries ex-citizens have moved to.

The map includes the option to view migration trends over time. So, for example, in the USA the map shows how since 1990 Mexico has replaced Canada as the number one country for Americans to emigrate to.

If you compare the same years on the two maps for the USA there is a difference in numbers and the countries where most immigrants originate from. For both 1990 and 2000 Un Mundo de Migrantes shows a large number of migrants moving from Mexico to the USA. While the Flight & Expulsion map doesn't show any migrants from Mexico to the USA in those years.


MigrationsMap.net also has a map showing migrant destinations for countries across the world. The map allows you to select any country and view where immigrants are originating from and where emigrants are moving to.

The map shows that the top destinations for Americans are Mexico and Canada. The data for the map comes from the Global Migrant Origin Database (date from March 2007).

The International Organization for Migration has created a similar map that shows inward and outward migration for countries across the globe, based on 2010 World Bank data. The IOM map shows that the top destination for ex-pats from the UK is Australia, followed by the USA and Canada.