People living outside their country of birth represent 3.6% of the world’s overall population. Almost half of identify as Christians.

There are over 280 million people in the world who are migrants, a figure that has grown by 83% in the last three decades.

A new report by Pew Research concludes that 47% of these migrants are Christians, while 29% are Muslim and 13% do not identify with a specific religion.

Christians are an estimated 30% of the whole global population but represent almost half of the migrants in the world. Other faith groups such as Muslims and Jews are also highly represented among the migrant communities. Meanwhile, is it the non-religious who are underrepresented among those who had to leave their home country.

A new home where there are other believers

Finding a job or joining family members are among the most common reasons to migrate. But “many migrants have moved to escape religious persecution or to live among people who hold similar religious beliefs”, says the Pew report.

“Migrants frequently go to countries where their religious identity is already prevalent: Many Muslims have moved to Saudi Arabia, while Jews have gravitated toward Israel”, found the study.

“Christians and religiously unaffiliated migrants have the same top three destination countries: the U.S., Germany and Russia”.

The migrants choosing Europe

The largest numbers of migrants in the world are living in Europe: 86.8 millions. Most of the people coming to the continent define themselves as Christians (56%), while 20% are religiously unaffiliated and 18% Muslim.

The number of international migrants in Europe has risen by 74% between 1990 and 2020. In other words, “migrants jumped from 7% of Europe’s total population to 12%”.

Many arrive from neighbouring countries such as Russia (6.5 million) and Ukraine (5 million), and also from Romania, Kazakhstan and Poland (4 million each).

It is Germany who hosts most migrants in Europe: 15.8 million. The central European country is followed by Russia (11.6 million), the United Kingdom (9.4 million), France (8.5 million) and Spain (6.8 million).

Christians globally

Looking at global figures, Christian migrants grew from 72.7 million in 1990 to 130.9 million in 2020 – an 80% increase.

Latin America is the region where most migrants identify as Christians (83%) and Venezuela is by far the country with the highest number of citizens leaving (4.5 million live outside the country).

But most of the world’s 131 million Christian migrants live in Europe (37%) or North America (30%).

“About 10% are in the Asia-Pacific region, followed by a little over 9% each in the Latin America-Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa regions. Only 4% of Christian migrants live in the Middle East and North Africa”, says the Pew report.