Topic 2: Migrant population (total/ distribution/ country of birth/ gender/ age/ etc.)
Germany reported the largest total number of immigrants (917.1 thousand) in 2017, followed by the United Kingdom (644.2 thousand), Spain (532.1 thousand), France (370.0 thousand) and Italy (343.4 thousand). Germany also reported the highest number of emigrants in 2017 (560.7 thousand), followed by Spain (368.9 thousand), the United Kingdom (359.7 thousand), France (312.6 thousand), Romania (242.2 thousand) and Poland (218.5 thousand). A total of 22 of the EU Member States reported more immigration than emigration in 2017, but in Bulgaria, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania the number of emigrants outnumbered the number of immigrants*.
*Eurostat, Migration and migrant population statistics, 2019 (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/pdfscache/1275.pdf)
- Regarding the gender distribution of immigrants to the EU Member States in 2017, there were slightly more men than women (54 % compared with 46 %).
- Immigrants into EU Member States in 2017 were, on average, much younger than the total population already resident in their country of destination. On 1 January 2018, the median age of the total population of the EU-28 stood at 43.1 years, while it was 28.3 years for immigrants to EU-28 in 2017.
- Regarding the country of birth, there were 38.2 million people born outside of the EU-28 living in an EU Member State on 1 January 2018, while there were 21.8 million persons who had been born in a different EU Member State from the one where they were resident.
*Eurostat, Migration and migrant population statistics, 2019 (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/pdfscache/1275.pdf)