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New Zealand’s Diaspora and Overseas-born Population - WP 04/13

3  The reverse diaspora (continued)

Table 6– The top 30 sources of migrants to New Zealand, 2001
  Country Migrants
  Country Migrants
1 UK 216,765
2 Australia 56,142
3 Samoa 47,118
4 China 38,949
5 South Africa 26,061
6 Fiji 25,722
7 Netherlands 22,239
8 India 20,889
9 Tonga 18,054
10 Korea 17,934
11 Cook Islands 15,222
12 USA 13,344
13 Taiwan 12,486
14 Malaysia 11,460
15 Hong Kong 11,301
16 Philippines 10,134
17 Japan 8,622
18 Germany 8,382
19 Canada 7,770
20 Ireland 6,726
21 Sri Lanka 6,168
22 Niue 5,328
23 Thailand 5,154
24 Iraq 4,848
25 Cambodia 4,770
26 Viet Nam 3,945
27 Singapore 3,909
28 Indonesia 3,792
29 Russia 2,913
30 Zimbabwe 2,886

Source – Calculated from unpublished Census tabulations from Statistics New Zealand

How does the diversity of New Zealand’s migrant population compare with that of other countries? Table 7 shows some concentration measures for New Zealand, and for six countries that publish the necessary data. New Zealand’s migrant population is more concentrated than the other six, with the exception of Ireland. The difference is fairly muted, however, for the biggest 10, 20, or 50 sources. New Zealand’s migrant population appears to be only slightly less diverse than that of the few countries for which data are available.

Table 7 – Diversity of migrant populations, New Zealand and selected countries, 2001
Percent of migrants from the… Australia Canada Denmark Ireland Italy Nether-lands New Zealand
Biggest source 25.4% 11.2% 12.8% 66.8% 13.3% 12.4% 30.9%
2 biggest sources 34.1% 17.3% 19.2% 72.6% 24.5% 24.6% 38.9%
5 biggest sources 46.8% 33.3% 33.9% 79.2% 37.9% 51.5% 54.9%
10 biggest sources 59.2% 51.2% 54.6% 86.9% 53.9% 67.7% 69.9%
20 biggest sources 74.5% 68.3% 77.3% 95.4% 72.6% 80.7% 84.9%
50 biggest sources 92.7% 87.8% 93.1% - 92.9% 94.2% 95.7%

Note – For the purposes of this table, a “migrant” is a person who was born outside his or her present country of residence.

Source – See Appendix Table 1

To what extent has the rise in numbers of migrants in New Zealand lead to a rise in the number of migrant communities? Table 8 shows changes in the number of countries from which New Zealand has received a given number of migrants, where a “migrant” is defined as a person who was born outside New Zealand. The table uses four minimum sizes for communities. For all four minimum sizes, there has been a substantial increase in the number of migrant communities. There were, for instance, only 5 communities of 10,000 or more in 1981, but there were 16 in 2001.[6]

Notes

  • [6]The 5 countries in 1981 were Australia, the Cook Islands, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Samoa.
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