I stumbled upon this fascinating map of global migration patters on the NY Times website. Here is a link:
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/world/20070622_CAPEVERDE_GRAPHIC.html
The countries are divided into two categories, green for the countries where more people were coming in, yellow for those where more people leaving.
I was surprised to notice that Russia had more people entering than leaving–I always thought that Russia was more a source of immigrants rather than a destination for them. Another surprise was Spain: more immigrants entered Spain than any other country! (I guess everybody likes Spanish food?? Kidding aside–what could be some possible reasons for this?) I was also surprised to see how many people were immigrating into Afghanistan…I would have expected the opposite! Why does Afghanistan attract so many immigrants? Or do the positive numbers come from foreign troops?
What are your thoughts? Possible answers to my questions above, about Spain and Afghanistan? Interesting observations? Surprises?
*Keep in mind, this map is from 2007. Do you think it would look any different in 2014?
I found it interesting that the three major countries of the world whose people immigrate elsewhere and send money back were Mexico, India and China. Relating to New York, I feel that in these countries, people migrate to places like New York especially for economic reasons. This map was developed in 2007, so the effects of the economic recession do not reflect on the data displayed.
As for what was mentioned above, I probably feel that Afghanistan has a high percentage of migrants comming in because of foreign troops. Unless I’m mistaken, that does seems to be the most plausable reason.
These ball charts are always fun to view, in my opinion, as they hold so much data but display it in an appealing way.