India: 18.5M natives live abroad, 3.9 times as many as the foreign-born living there
everyone alive, 2024
Residents, not a year’s flow. In 1990, 6.58M natives lived abroad and 7.21M foreign-born people lived in the country. Both numbers include people born in another part of the former common country. The balance flipped between 1990 and 1995.
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Two head counts: natives of the country living elsewhere, and people born elsewhere living in it. These are everyone alive now, built up over decades, not a year’s flow and not arrivals minus departures.
Blue is the card’s first number, orange the second; they share one scale. The ring marks where the lines crossed; the gap after it is shaded. The large numbers are the latest year both lines share.
- Emigrant stock thousand persons
6,575 (1990) → 18,534 (2024)
- International migrant stock thousand persons
7,213 (1990) → 4,796 (2024)
Only years where both series are published; gaps are not filled. An overtaking counts if the new leader was behind at the start and ahead in no more than a fifth of the years before it, and it leads in the latest shared year and in at least two shared years in a row. A short dip of up to two years does not end a lead and is named; if the leader was ahead once before, that year is named too. Size thresholds pick a story and do not show that one causes the other.
Early in the series the foreign-born include many people born before the partition of British India in what are now neighbouring countries. The UN counts by country of birth, or by citizenship where birthplace is not recorded. Refugees are included. Mid-year estimates every five years and for 2024. Countries where the balance flipped only because the other side shrank (people who had moved within a former common country left or died, refugees went home) are not shown.
A question for this picture
What changed first: jobs at home, jobs abroad, or borders?