The list of countries with the largest percentage of the native population living in the diaspora reveals a history of war and displacement, but also economic stagnation and a lack of perspective.
Albania holds third place in this list, where 30.7 percent of the population lives in the diaspora.
A group of nations that usually appears among the countries with the largest diasporas are those in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. After the fall of communism in the early 1990s, many people left in search of better economic opportunities, for example, in Western Europe.
Bloody civil wars in the following years compounded these effects in some countries. This can be seen today in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where 34 percent of the population lives abroad, and in Albania, where this figure is 30.7 percent.
In regions where small countries are common, and distance is added as a factor, for example, in the Caribbean or Oceania, diaspora life is more widespread.
Of all sovereign countries with at least 750,000 inhabitants, the Caribbean nation of Guyana had the most significant share of its native-born population – 36.4 percent – living abroad. Jamaica comes fifth with 28.6 percent. Considering independent countries of all sizes, island nations dominate the top ranking, with up to half of their population located elsewhere.
Polynesia was the region with the highest percentage of the diaspora in 2020, at 28.7 percent, followed by the Caribbean at 17.7 percent.
Countries currently or recently involved in war also have large diasporas. This applies to Syria, where about 30 percent of the population of 28 million now live abroad, as well as South Sudan (21 percent).
Countries severely mismanaged by their governments include Eritrea with 18.5 percent of the diaspora and Venezuela with 16.6 percent. An even larger diaspora can be found in El Salvador at 20.4 percent. A civil war ended in the small Central American country in 1992, but gang violence has prevailed.