International Migrants as a Share of Population: South Africa (UN)

## What this measures

International migrants as a share of the total population of South Africa, in percent, on 1 July of 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020 and 2024, from the UN's International Migrant Stock 2024. The UN builds this estimate from data on people born abroad (the foreign-born population) and adds refugees, asylum seekers and people in refugee-like situations reported by UNHCR (or UNRWA) (type of data "B R").

## Why it matters

Migrants are a large part of the labour force, consumer base and population growth in many countries, and migration is one of the most argued-over subjects in politics. The stock (everyone who has moved and stayed) changes slowly and is the base every flow figure adds to or subtracts from.

## How to read it

Higher means a larger part of the people living there were born abroad. Each point is dated July 1; the last step (2020 to 2024) is four years. Compare places with the same measure: the world's share was 3.7% in 2024, while small, rich or Gulf states run far above it. The change since 2000 is migration.undesa.share_change_since_2000.zaf.

## What it does not say

It counts where people were born (or their citizenship), not why they came, how long ago, or whether they have since naturalised: a migrant who became a citizen decades ago is still counted. The UN aligns national censuses, registers and surveys to a common date, so years without a recent census are estimated and are revised with each edition. It is a stock, not the yearly flow of arrivals and departures.

## Source

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2024). International Migrant Stock 2024. Table 1 (international migrant stock at mid-year) and Table 3 (as a percentage of the total population), both sexes, from https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/undesa_pd_2024_ims_stock_by_sex_and_destination.xlsx (linked from https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/content/international-migrant-stock). Licence: Copyright © 2024 by United Nations, made available under a Creative Commons license CC BY 3.0 IGO (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/). Palanor's copy is unchanged except where this section says otherwise. The share is the UN's own (Table 3), computed on its total population estimates from World Population Prospects. The UN revises the whole series with each edition; the next one replaces these figures back to 1990.