Forced Migration

1944 – 2025
19442025

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About this tool

Who was forced to move where, and when? This tool maps 778 documented accounts of expulsion, deportation, repatriation and escape between 1944 and 2025, hand-compiled from 355 published sources. Most of the people in them had already migrated once, as workers, refugees or minorities of foreign origin, and were then forced to move again.

Overview to detail. Filter the event types and the years at the top. The Map draws the largest flows, the Corridors view every flow between countries grouped by region, the Time series people per year, and Cases every record with its source. Click a country anywhere to open its profile: the views then show only its flows. Click a line, a ribbon or a year for the records behind it. The address bar is always the link to what you see; the download button gives it as CSV.

Event types

Definitions derived from the record descriptions: the sources use the words, none defines them.

Expulsion
A state removes a whole group at once, usually foreigners or a minority: Nigeria in 1983, Uganda in 1972, Bulgaria in 1989.
Deportation
Removals of individuals, mostly for their immigration status or a conviction, added up per year or campaign: South Africa to its neighbours, Malaysia, the Dominican Republic to Haiti.
Repatriation
The return of refugees or migrants to their country. It mixes returns assisted by UNHCR or IOM with returns under pressure, which the records rarely tell apart.
Escape
Foreign workers fleeing a war in the country they lived in: Kuwait and Iraq in 1990-91, Libya in 2011.

Origin, destination, transit

Origin is the country people were forced out of: usually the country they lived in, not the one they were born in. Destination is where the record says they went. "Various", "etc." and regions such as "other SADC countries" count as an unspecified origin or destination: in every total and every country profile, never drawn as a country.

Transit. The records have no transit field, so the tool reads each record's group ("Ghanaians", "sub-Saharan Africans") as a nationality, through a table of all 184 group labels. People sent to a country that is neither theirs nor the one they left, as when Kuwait expelled Palestinians to Jordan in 1991, count as arrivals in a third country. 161 labels name a country; the others are ethnic, regional or unspecified groups, whose arrivals are in neither figure.

How the numbers are made

One estimate per record. Each record gives a low, a central and a high estimate of the people moved over its years; the central one is counted and spread evenly over those years. 71 records give a range; where several sources are merged, the range spans them.

Several destinations. 40 records name more than one destination (or origin). Where the record breaks the number down (its comment, or its group naming one of the listed countries) the breakdown is used; otherwise the number is split evenly between the places listed (29 records), and an unspecified part ("etc.") keeps its share as an unspecified destination.

Several sources, one event. Figures are never added up across sources for the same flow. Where sources give figures for the same origin, destination, type and year, their median is counted (176 records, marked "median of sources" in Cases). These 19 events are described by several sources in ways that do not line up (different years, destinations or groups), so each is counted once, from one source:

  1. Nigeria expels West African migrants ('Ghana Must Go'), 1983 · source 46
    Afolayan (1988) is a peer-reviewed study of this expulsion, written close to it, with a count for every destination. GSME (1) gives one total for six countries; the Ghana Statistical Service (60) counts Ghanaians only, and puts them higher (0.9-1.2 million against Afolayan's 700,000); 178 has no bibliographic entry; 179 and 338 are later secondary accounts.
  2. South Africa deports SADC migrants, 1994-2006 · source 163, 164
    Waller (2006) gives yearly counts by destination for 1994-2004 and is peer-reviewed. Human Rights Watch (162, 315) repeats the same official counts for 1994-1997; the Migration Policy Institute total for 1994-2008 (163, row 397) spans every one of these years and would count them twice; 319 is one year of the same series. For 2006, 163 and 317 are one publication entered twice: 163 is kept.
  3. Saudi Arabia expels Yemenis during the Gulf crisis, 1990-91 · source 1
    GSME (Garrity 2022) is peer-reviewed and gives a range (750,000-1,000,000); the other three give 800,000-900,000 for the same expulsion.
  4. Afghan refugees return from Pakistan and Iran, 2002-12 · source 346
    UNHCR's operation profile (346) counts every assisted return for 2002-2012 from all host countries. The UNHCR figure for Pakistan in 2002-2004 (345) is part of it. Cost of the choice: these returns show an unspecified origin rather than Pakistan.
  5. Ghana expels foreign nationals (Aliens Compliance Order), 1969-70 · source 1
    GSME is the only source here that covers every expelled nationality, with a range (200,000-1,000,000). Daly (2022, 45) is peer-reviewed but counts Nigerians only (500,000); 178 has no bibliographic entry; 179 gives a partial list; 180 is a press article (2.5 million).
  6. Algeria expels Moroccans, 1975 · source 1
    GSME is the only peer-reviewed source; the others are press and advocacy and give 40,000-500,000. GSME's 30,000 is far below the 350,000 most often cited: worth a second look.
  7. Saudi Arabia's campaign against undocumented workers, 2012-14 · source 377
    The Global Detention Project's submission to the UN CERD (377) counts deportations by destination. 213 and 375 are one article entered twice; 376 is an earlier report on part of the same campaign.
  8. Iraq deports Faili Kurds and Shia to Iran, 1980-90 · source 223
    Ketuly (2023) is a peer-reviewed study of these deportations. Minority Rights Group (224) and Human Rights Watch (226) count subgroups of the same people (Kurds, Shia).
  9. Kuwait expels Palestinians after the Gulf War, 1991 · source 227
    The BADIL refugee survey (227) is the specialist source and splits the expulsion by destination. Its 375,000 (row 569) is the total of which Jordan (265,000) and Iraq (2,000) are parts, so row 569 is set aside to avoid counting Jordan twice; about 108,000 to other destinations are lost. GSME (1) and Chatelard (228) give 300,000 for the same people.
  10. Migrant workers flee the war in Libya, 2011 · source 265
    IOM's operational count (265) covers every migrant worker who left Libya in 2011. Zohry's 800,000 Egyptians (148) would exceed it on its own, so the two cannot both be counted. Uncertain: IOM's figure may exclude Egyptians who crossed on their own.
  11. Nigeria expels West African migrants again, 1985 · source 46
    Afolayan (1988), peer-reviewed, counts the expulsion by destination. GSME (1) gives one total for four countries; Bump (181) counts Ghanaians only.
  12. Vietnam expels ethnic Chinese (Hoa), 1977-79 · source 1
    GSME covers the whole period with a range (400,000-1,000,000); Minority Rights Group (334) gives 1979 only.
  13. Angola expels Congolese, 2018 · source 1
    GSME is peer-reviewed and gives a range (330,000-400,000); ReliefWeb (16) is a news digest.
  14. Burkinabe forced out of Cote d'Ivoire, 1999-2007 · source 72
    Bjarnesen (2013) is an academic study covering the whole period; ReliefWeb's 2002 figure for Burkinabe (128) falls inside it. The same ReliefWeb report's figures for Guineans, Malians and Liberians are other people and stay counted.
  15. Iran deports Afghans, 2012-15 · source 4
    Crawley and Kaytaz (2022) is a peer-reviewed study of exactly these deportations and covers 2012-2015; GSME (1) covers 2012-2013 of the same campaign.
  16. Angola expels Congolese, 2003-07 · source 15
    UN OCHA's situation report (15) gives the UN's operational count for 2003-2007. GSME (1), Bekker (3) and The New Humanitarian (70) count parts of the same expulsions; Bekker gives 126,247 twice (as Guineans and as all nationalities), the 2004 total of one operation.
  17. Bulgaria expels Bulgarian Turks, 1989 · source 67
    Two peer-reviewed studies (340,000 and 350,000); the more recent one, Kutlay (2017), is kept.
  18. Azerbaijanis forced out of Armenia, 1987-90 · source 22
    All three sources are Azerbaijani or pro-Azerbaijani (an op-ed, a magazine, an advocacy centre). Visions of Azerbaijan (22) covers the main period, 1988-89. An independent source is needed.
  19. Dominican Republic expels Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent, 2015-19 · source 1
    GSME is peer-reviewed and covers the whole period with a range (250,000-310,000); the others count parts of 2015-2016.

Corrections

Place names are unified through a list of current, other and former country names (Zaire and the DRC, Burma and Myanmar, Swaziland and Eswatini are one country each), plus a short table of typos and demonyms. These records were corrected, each with its reason:

  • Row 304: end year 2921 → 2021. Typo: a year in the 30th century
  • Row 651: end year 2918 → 2018. Typo: a year in the 30th century
  • Row 804: end year 1989 → 1990. Typo: the period ends before it starts
  • Row 326: . Nigeria expelling people to Nigeria is impossible; the group column names Nigeriens
  • Row 340: target name Ghana; Nigeria; Cameroon; Chad → Ghana; Niger; Cameroon; Chad. Nigeria expelling people to Nigeria is impossible; read as Niger, as in the 1983 record
  • Row 69: origin name Bangladesh → India; target name India → Bangladesh; expelled group Indians → Bangladeshis; year 1971 → 1972; end year 1971 → 1972; lower bound 10000000 → 9000000; mean estimate 10000000 → 9839305; upper bound 10000000 → 9899305; data source id 214 → 214; 478; 479. Recoded after checking: the 1971 record mixed the flight of about 10 million people from East Pakistan into India (Mar-Dec 1971, refugees from their own country, outside this collection's scope) with their return, which is the repatriation it is coded as. India registered 9,899,305 refugees on 15 Dec 1971 and required those who had arrived after 25 Mar 1971 to go back by the end of Feb 1972; over a million had left by 6 Jan 1972, 6 million by the end of January, 9 million by the end of February, and 60,000 remained on 25 Mar 1972 (sources 478, 479).

What the data cannot tell

The records cover documented episodes, so the map shows where forced moves were recorded, not where they happened. Coverage is thin before 1990 and leans on English-language sources. The collection centres on the world outside the OECD, where official migration statistics are thinnest; 86 records start in an OECD country (the United States above all), and OECD deportations are far from complete. Escapes are rare in the sources and few in the data.