The International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental organization related to the United Nations, has published its World Migration Report since the year 2000.
The ninth edition of the report was published at the beginning of the year.
According to its data, the phenomenon of migration has reached enormous proportions globally, considering not only movements of people from one country to another, but also those within the same national jurisdiction.
The definition of migrants used in the report includes extremely heterogeneous categories, from refugees to people who have moved for work, such as many Italians recently arriving in Australia.
According to the most recent available data, there were about 244 million international migrants in the world in 2015, that's 3.3 percent of the global population.
Therefore, despite social, political impact and media coverage, the migration of people from one country to another only affects a rather small minority of the global population; which means that staying in your country of birth remains mostly the norm. The vast majority of people in the world do not cross borders.
On the other hand, considering the flow of migration within national borders, for example from rural to urban areas, the numbers are much more significant. In 2007, for example, it is estimated that there were approximately 740 million people who moved within their country of residence.
Nevertheless, the increase in scale of international migration is still evident, not only because of the importance given to the phenomenon by international media but also the importance given to cross-border migration in many national political agendas.
For instance, a 2003 projection was that by 2050 international migrants would account for 2.6 per cent of the global population or 230 million people (a figure that has already been surpassed). In 2010, a revised projection for 2050 was 405 million people.
The United States top the ranking of countries receiving more international migrants, followed by Germany and Russia. Australia is ninth whilst Italy follows in eleventh position.
Looking at nations whose citizens migrate elsewhere, India has the most migration followed by Mexico then Russia. Italy is in twentieth place, with more than two and a half million of its citizens living abroad.
Source: Pexels
However, this data do not consider the impact that immigration can have on a nation according to its size. Nations like the United States and Russia have a resident population that is significantly larger than that of Australia.
If we look at the proportion of immigrants in a country compared to the total number of its residents, Australia ranks second in the world, with 28.2% of its population made of international migrants. In first place we have Switzerland with 29.4% of their total population being born in other countries.
