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The United Nations counts international migrants as people of any age who live outside their country (or in some cases, territory) of birth – regardless of their motives for migrating, their length of residence or their legal status.
In addition to naturalized citizens and permanent residents, the UN’s international migrant numbers include asylum-seekers and refugees, as well as people without official residence documents. The UN also includes some people who live in a country temporarily – like some students and guest workers – but it does not include short-term visitors like tourists, nor does it typically include military forces deployed abroad.
For brevity, this report refers to international migrants simply as migrants. Occasionally, we use the term immigrants to differentiate migrants living in a destination country from emigrants who have left an origin country. Every person who is living outside of his or her country of birth is all three – a migrant, an immigrant and an emigrant.
The analysis in this report focuses on existing stocks of international migrants – all people who now live outside their birth country, no matter when they left. We do not estimate migration flows – how many people move across borders in any single year.
Jews make up 0.2% of the world’s population but account for 1% of all international migrants. In percentage terms, this means Jews are more likely than people in the world’s other major religious groups to live outside their country of birth.
Two-in-ten Jews have moved across national borders as of 2020, compared with smaller shares of Christians (6%), Muslims (4%), Buddhists (2%), religiously unaffiliated people (2%) and Hindus (1%).
Jewish migrants have traveled an average of about 2,300 miles from their origin to destination countries, similar to the distances traveled by Christians, Buddhists and the religiously unaffiliated.
Around half of the world’s current stock of 3 million Jewish migrants live in the Middle East-North Africa region, mainly in Israel, the world’s only Jewish-majority country. Europe is the second-most common destination area of Jewish migrants (21%), followed by North America (16%). Smaller shares of Jewish migrants live in the Latin America-Caribbean or Asia-Pacific regions. Very few Jewish migrants reside in sub-Saharan Africa.
The most common area of origin for Jewish migrants is Europe (47%). In addition, many Jewish migrants were born in the Middle East-North Africa region (26%), primarily in Israel and Morocco. About 8% of Jewish migrants come from Latin America, and an additional 8% are from Asia. Smaller shares of Jewish migrants were born in North America and sub-Saharan Africa.
Destinations
Israel – whose Law of Return grants Jews the right to make “aliyah,” or move to Israel and receive immediate citizenship – is far and away the top destination for Jewish migrants.
As of 2020, about 1.5 million Jews born elsewhere reside in Israel, making up just over half of all Jewish migrants worldwide. Top sources of Jewish migrants in Israel include former Soviet republics such as Ukraine (170,000) and Russia (150,000). Morocco is also high on the list (160,000).
The United States has the second-largest population of Jewish migrants (400,000). Just over a quarter of Jewish immigrants to the U.S. were born in Israel, and sizable populations have come from Russia (50,000) and Canada (50,000).
The United Kingdom is the third-most common destination for Jewish migrants (120,000), closely followed by Australia and Russia.
A sizable number of Jewish migrants live in the Palestinian territories (50,000). Most of them were born in Israel. Many have moved to the West Bank as part of an expansion of Israeli settlements.
Origins
Jewish migrants tend to come from Europe and the Middle East-North Africa region.
Israel, the leading destination for Jewish migrants, is also their top origin country, with 270,000 Jews born in Israel now living elsewhere. Other major sources of Jewish migrants include Russia (240,000), Ukraine (240,000) and other former Soviet republics, such as Moldova and Georgia.
Combined, the 15 countries of the former Soviet Union account for 840,000 (or 28%) of the global stock of Jewish migrants in 2020. Many of them emigrated to Israel in the decade following the Soviet Union’s collapse.
Morocco – an Arab country that for centuries had a vibrant Jewish community – is the fourth-most common source of Jewish migrants (200,000). Most Jewish migrants from Morocco are now in Israel. In the decades before and especially after Israel’s independence in 1948, many Jews moved to Israel from other countries in the Middle East and North Africa. A sizable number also came from Ethiopia.
Country pairs
Jews often move from countries with shrinking Jewish populations to places where Jewish communities are thriving.
The 10 most common routes for Jewish international migrants all lead to the same two destinations: Israel and the U.S., which together are home to more than 80% of the global Jewish population and 64% of Jewish migrants.
Ukraine to Israel is the top migration pathway for Jewish migrants, with 170,000 Ukrainian Jews living in Israel as of 2020. Many Russia-born Jews (150,000) also have migrated to Israel, making it the third-most common path for Jewish migrants, globally.
Ukraine- and Russia-born Jews, together with those from other ex-Soviet republics, form the largest migrant group in Israel. About half a million Jewish migrants born in the former Soviet Union now reside in Israel, meaning that 16% of all Jewish migrants were born in ex-Soviet republics and now live in Israel.
Unlike immigrants from elsewhere to Israel who are overwhelmingly Jews, a considerable share of those from the former Soviet republics are not Jews, according to the Israeli Ministry of the Interior’s definition of Jewishness, and many consider themselves secular. Still, these non-Jewish immigrants were eligible to move to Israel as the spouses, children or grandchildren of Jews. For instance, about half of Russia-born immigrants in Israel are formally registered as Jews, compared with virtually all Morocco-born immigrants.
Morocco to Israel is the second-most common migration route for Jewish migrants (160,000). Following the founding of Israel in 1948, hundreds of thousands of Moroccan Jews left, and today only a few thousand Jews remain in the Muslim-majority country.
Similarly, as most Jews from Romania, Ethiopia and Poland have migrated to Israel, that country now has many more Romania-, Ethiopia-, or Poland-born Jews than remain in each of these countries. For instance, 90,000 Romanian Jews live in Israel as of 2020, while Romania is home to fewer than 10,000 Jews.
Many Israel-born Jews (110,000) are now living in the U.S., where Jews make up about 2% of the overall population, making this the fourth-most common migration route for Jews.
Change since 1990
The global stock, or total number of Jews living outside their countries of birth, grew from an estimated 2.3 million in 1990 to 3 million in 2020 (up 28%). Jews had the smallest increase among the religious groups in this analysis, smaller than the rise among Hindus (48%) and the religiously unaffiliated (67%).
Jewish migration patterns have been fairly stable over the past three decades, as Jews continued to move mostly between Europe, Israel and the U.S.
Israel and the U.S. remained the most common destinations for Jewish migrants between 1990 and 2020. The foreign-born Jewish population in Israel grew from 1.3 to 1.5 million (up 14%), and in the U.S. it increased from 290,000 to 400,000 (up 41%).
The United Kingdom – which in 2020 was the third-most common destination – had been ninth on the list in 1990. Jewish migration to the UK rose substantially during this period, with the stock of Jewish migrants living in the UK tripling from 40,000 to 120,000. Germany experienced similar growth, from 30,000 to 90,000, and rose to sixth on the list from 10th.
While France remained a top 10 destination for Jewish migrants, a sizable number of French Jews have left the country as well. Between 1990 and 2020, the number of Jewish migrants living in France grew from 50,000 to 80,000 (up 60%), while the number of French-born Jews residing elsewhere increased from 40,000 to 70,000 (up 81%).
Meanwhile, several places, including many former Soviet Union countries, saw a considerable decline in the number of Jewish migrants they host.
For instance, in 1990, Russia was home to 120,000 Jewish migrants, making it their third-most common destination. Since then, the number has fallen to 100,000 (down 19%). Ukraine experienced a similar decline to 50,000 (a 22% drop). In Georgia, the Jewish migrant count dropped to less than 3,000 (down 77%).
The number of foreign-born Jews living in the Palestinian territories also decreased in the past three decades, from 80,000 to 50,000 (or 36%), as Jewish settlers who had arrived from Israel in the 1970s and 1980s reached the ends of their lives over this period.
On the other hand, Jewish migration out of the former Soviet republics increased between 1990 and 2020, partly due to the mass departures of Jews from the region following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Jews were disproportionately likely to leave the area during those decades. Between 1990 and 2020, the number of Jews from the former Soviet republics who were living outside their country of birth rose from 620,000 to 840,000 (up 34%), while the number of all migrants from the region rose from 32 million to 33 million (up 4%).
The flow of Jews out of the former Soviet republics continues, leaving a small number of Jews still in the region.
