The map above shows the most popular destination country for emigrants of each European country. The data comes from the UN for 2015, so won’t include any post-Brexit effects.
Here are a list of who wants to move to each destination country:
- Germany: Italy, Poland, Czechia, Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, Luxembourg, Turkey and Greece
- Russia: Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine and Maldova
- United Kingdom: Ireland, Lithuania, Cyrpus and the Isle of Man
- France: Spain, Portugal and Belgim
- Sweden: Denmark, Norway and Finland
- Italy: Switzerland, Romania and Albania
- Serbia: Croatia and Montenegro
- Turkey: Bulgaria and Macdeonia
- Spain: France and Andorra
- Australia: United Kingdom and Malta
- Ukraine: Russia
- Norway: Sweden
- Denmark: Iceland
- Belgium: The Netherlands
- Czechia: Slovakia
- Austria: Serbia
- USA: Germany
Interestingly, the only non-European destination countries that appear are Australia and the United States, all other countries have another European country as their most popular destination.
There’s also a few interesting links, such as the Dutch moving south to Belgium, the Belgians moving south to France, the French moving south to Spain, but the Spanish moving north to France.
Or you have Icelanders moving to Denmark, Danes moving to Sweden, the Swedes moving to Norway and the Norwegians moving to Sweden.
Or Russia and Ukraine being the most popular destination for each other’s emigrants.
What do you think of this map? Please leave your comments below and help us by sharing it:
Richard scott says
Fascinating visual. Sent it to my high school grand kids who are map lovers
fredrik says
Born in the sending country or citizen of it? Interesting in particular re Australia/UK, children of British immigrants often still UK citizens although not born there
Tomas Nofziger says
A beautiful map. Very easy to read and most interesting!
Robert Higgins says
Netherlands not listed?
MoverDB says
The most popular destination for Dutch emigrants is Belgium, but it looks like no other country has the Netherlands as their top country.
Axel de Groot says
Born Dutchie, now Aussie for 60 years. Wouldn’t get me back for all the tea in China. Great maps, well done.
tim roth says
Americans visit Germany while the Germans get out dodge … lol
XYZ says
You should have separated Serbia and Kosovo on the map because their populations have different countries of destination.
Carlos says
The only one moves out Europe are brexiters.
Stefan says
At least in the case of Switzerland, this is almost certainly mostly a matter of Italians working in Switzerland giving birth to children in Switzerland and then returning after some years to Italy.
As a swiss citizen who travels often to all parts of Italy, it’s not really a question of whether I’ll meet Italians who lived or were born in Switzerland on any given trip, but of how long it will take me until someone tells me about their time in Switzerland.