Washington, USA - A new report on religion and international migration by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that Christians comprise nearly half—an estimated 106 million, or 49%—of the world’s 214 million international migrants. According to the study, Faith on the Move: The Religious Affiliation of International Migrants, Muslims make up the second-largest group—almost 60 million, or 27%. The remaining quarter are a mix of Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, adherents of other faiths and the religiously unaffiliated (those who identify as atheists and agnostics or say they have no particular religion).
In some respects, the religious affiliation of migrants mirrors the religious composition of the world’s population. For instance, Christians and Muslims are the two largest religious groups among migrants as well as the two largest religious groups in general. However, Christians comprise a much greater share of migrants (about one-in-two) than they do of the general population (nearly one-in-three). Muslims also are somewhat overrepresented among migrants, though not by as large a margin. They comprise only a slightly higher share of migrants (27%) than of the world’s population (23%). On the other hand, some religious groups are underrepresented among migrants. Hindus, for example, comprise about 5% of international migrants but 10-15% of the global population.
In percentage terms, Jews have by far the highest level of migration. About one-quarter of Jews alive today (25%) have left the country in which they were born and now live somewhere else. By contrast, just 5% of Christians, 4% of Muslims and fewer than 3% of members of other major religious groups have migrated across international borders.
These are some of the key findings from the report, which focuses on the total number (or cumulative “stocks”) of migrants living around the world as of 2010 rather than the annual rate of migration (or current “flows”). An international migrant is defined as a person who has been living for a year or longer in a country other than the one in which he or she was born.