International Migration: Patterns of Emigration and Immigration

Every year, millions of people pack their lives into a few suitcases and cross national borders in search of better jobs, education, safety, or a fresh start. This movement of people across countries, known as international migration, has reshaped economies, cultures, and even family structures across continents. For India, a country that sends out more emigrants than any other nation in the world, understanding this phenomenon is not just an academic exercise but a window into how globalisation and development play out in real lives.

What is international migration? 🔗

International migration refers to the movement of people across an international border for the purpose of changing their place of residence. According to the United Nations, a person is considered an international migrant if they have moved to another country and lived there continuously for at least 12 months. This distinguishes migrants from tourists, business travellers, or short-term visitors.

The phenomenon has two sides, and both must be studied together to make sense of global population movements.

Emigration: leaving the country of origin 🔗

Emigration is the act of leaving one’s country of origin to settle in another. The person who leaves is called an emigrant. When a software engineer from Bengaluru moves to Toronto for a permanent job, she is an emigrant from the perspective of India.

Immigration: entering the destination country 🔗

Immigration is the act of entering and settling in a country that is not one’s place of birth or citizenship. The same software engineer is an immigrant from the perspective of Canada. The two terms describe the same movement, but from opposite vantage points.

Globally, the scale is staggering. The International Organization for Migration estimates that around 281 million people, or 3.6 per cent of the world population, are international migrants, and together they send home roughly $856 billion in remittances every year.

Push and pull factors driving migration 🔗

Why do people leave familiar surroundings to start over thousands of kilometres away? Demographers explain this through the classic push-pull framework. Push factors drive people out of their country of origin, while pull factors attract them to a particular destination.

Push factors at the origin 🔗

Common push factors include unemployment, low wages, poor working conditions, political instability, conflict, religious or ethnic persecution, environmental disasters, and lack of educational or research opportunities. In India, lack of opportunities and inadequate research infrastructure are frequently cited as reasons skilled professionals look abroad. Scientists and researchers often cite the absence of well-funded laboratories and limited grants as key motivations.

Pull factors at the destination 🔗

Pull factors include higher salaries, better living standards, advanced technology, political stability, world-class universities, and the presence of an established diaspora that helps newcomers settle in. Better quality of life, higher salaries, access to advanced technology, and stable political conditions in developed countries continue to attract talent from less developed regions.

Employment and education are arguably the two strongest pull factors today. Indian students leaving for the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and increasingly Germany and France are responding largely to perceived returns on education and the prospect of post-study work permits.

Patterns of Indian emigration 🔗

India is at the very centre of global migration flows. As of 2024, over 18.5 million people of Indian origin live overseas, accounting for roughly 6 per cent of all international migrants worldwide. The destinations and demographics of these emigrants reveal a fascinating story.

Gulf migration: the labour corridor 🔗

The largest corridor of Indian emigration is to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries – Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman. These countries host millions of Indian workers, predominantly in construction, services, transportation, and domestic work. According to Ministry of External Affairs data, 41 per cent of emigration clearances issued between 2021 and 2025 were for workers heading to Saudi Arabia, with the UAE next.

Most of these are temporary, contract-based labour migrants who remain on Emigration Check Required (ECR) passports. Traditionally, southern states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu dominated this flow, but Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have recently overtaken their southern counterparts as the leading origins of young men leaving for low-skilled overseas work.

Skilled migration to Western countries 🔗

A different stream flows toward the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. This stream is dominated by highly educated professionals – engineers, doctors, IT specialists, researchers, and students. Indians are now the largest migrant group in Canada and the second-largest immigrant group in the USA after Mexicans.

Interestingly, migration patterns differ sharply by gender. Men dominate the Gulf flow, while women are more likely to move to the USA. Nearly one in four Indian migrant women now lives in the United States.

The Indian student exodus 🔗

India has also become one of the largest sources of international students. Education has emerged as a strong driver of both temporary and eventual permanent migration, particularly to Canada and Australia, where post-study work pathways often convert students into permanent residents.

Brain drain vs brain gain 🔗

Perhaps the most debated consequence of international migration is the loss of skilled human capital from developing countries, captured in two contrasting terms: brain drain and brain gain.

Understanding brain drain 🔗

The term brain drain was coined to describe the emigration of trained professionals – doctors, engineers, scientists, technologists – from developing countries to developed nations. The concern is straightforward: when a country invests scarce public resources to educate a doctor or an engineer and that person migrates permanently, the home country bears the cost while the destination country reaps the benefits.

The numbers historically supported this concern. A widely cited study found that among doctoral graduates in science and engineering from American universities in 1995, 79 per cent of those from India and 88 per cent from China remained in the USA after completing their studies. For developing countries, this represents a transfer of expensive human capital to richer economies. The impact is felt most sharply in critical sectors like healthcare, where the loss of doctors and nurses can weaken public health systems.

The brain gain perspective 🔗

In recent decades, demographers and economists have begun to challenge the purely negative framing of skilled emigration. New evidence suggests that brain gain can also occur, where the prospect of migration actually increases the stock of skilled workers at home.

How does this work? When emigration opportunities expand, more young people invest in education to qualify for those opportunities. Not all of them eventually leave. A widely discussed example is India’s IT sector. As demand for IT workers in the United States grew and visa caps were relaxed, more Indians acquired IT skills than actually emigrated, raising the overall pool of skilled professionals available within India.

Brain circulation: a third way 🔗

The most recent thinking goes a step further. Scholars now describe a phenomenon called brain circulation – a continuous, two-way flow of talent, ideas, capital, and networks between origin and destination countries. Countries like Taiwan and India have seen success in promoting brain circulation, where professionals gain experience abroad and later return to contribute to their home country’s development.

Returning migrants bring back not just savings but management practices, technology, professional networks, and entrepreneurial energy. India’s IT and startup ecosystem owes a great deal to this reverse flow.

Remittances: the financial dividend 🔗

Even when migrants do not return, they contribute financially to families and communities back home. India is the world’s top recipient of remittances. According to the Sixth Round Remittances Survey, Maharashtra received the largest share of remittances at 20.5 per cent, followed by Kerala at 19.7 per cent, Tamil Nadu at 10.4 per cent, and Telangana at 8.1 per cent. These inflows partially offset the human capital that countries lose to emigration and provide a critical safety net for millions of households.

Global example: Indian skilled migration to Canada 🔗

Canada offers a textbook case of structured, skilled labour migration and the role of Asian – particularly Indian – talent. Canada actively manages skilled migration through a points-based Express Entry system, which selects candidates from three programs: the Federal Skilled Worker Program, the Canadian Experience Class, and the Federal Skilled Trades Program. Express Entry remains the primary pathway to permanent residence for skilled workers applying from India, and candidates are ranked using a Comprehensive Ranking System.

The result is visible in admission statistics. Between 2015 and 2019, Indian admissions to Canada more than doubled. After a pandemic-related dip in 2020, admissions surged to 127,945 in 2021, climbed further to 118,250 in 2022, and reached a record 139,790 new permanent residents in 2023. Indian nationals continue to perform strongly in Express Entry and provincial nominee programs.

This Canadian story illustrates how destination countries actively design immigration policy to attract skilled migrants from Asia, particularly India, to address labour shortages in technology, healthcare, engineering, and the skilled trades.

India as an immigration country 🔗

While India is overwhelmingly a country of emigration, it also receives immigrants – a fact often overlooked. According to the 2011 Census, India hosts immigrants mainly from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal. It is also home to refugee populations from Tibet, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and Myanmar.

The India-Bangladesh corridor is, in fact, one of the world’s ten largest migration corridors, alongside India-UAE, India-USA, and India-Saudi Arabia.

Policy responses and the road ahead 🔗

India regulates international emigration through frameworks like the Emigration Act of 1983 and operates the e-Migrate portal under the Ministry of External Affairs. Indian migrants are now present in 207 countries, with significant populations of over 100,000 in 16 of them. The policy focus has gradually shifted from preventing brain drain to encouraging brain circulation through diaspora engagement, return incentives, and knowledge networks.

What do you think? If a young engineer from your hometown received a high-paying job offer abroad, would you advise her to leave permanently, work abroad for a few years and return, or stay back and contribute locally? And do you believe India is gaining more than it is losing from its position as the world’s largest source of international migrants?

References

1. https://www.dataforindia.com/international-migration/
2. https://www.icwa.in/show_content.php?lang=1&level=1&ls_id=14463&lid=8868
3. https://www.ijhssi.org/papers/v2(5)/version-3/C251217.pdf
4. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1275994/
5. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/india-migration-country-profile
6. https://fordschool.umich.edu/news/2025/brain-drain-or-brain-gain-new-evidence-points-benefits-skilled-migration
7. https://acr-journal.com/article/international-migration-brain-drain-and-the-development-of-the-third-world-1468/
8. https://immigration.ca/how-to-apply-for-canada-pr-from-india/
9. https://immigration.ca/rise-and-fall-of-indian-citizens-as-new-permanent-residents-of-canada/