On the move: 232 million migrants in the world

The number of international migrants has soared since 1990 as more and more people are leaving their country of origin. So who's migrating and where are they going?

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Illegal immigrants from north Africa arrive on the southern Italian island of Lampedusa
Immigrants arrive on the southern Italian island of Lampedusa. Is Italy home to a lot more migrants than other countries? Photograph: STRINGER/ITALY/REUTERS

The UN keeps track of the number of migrants - and it has been counting more of them since 1990. Back then, there were 150 million international migrants in the world - by their latest reckoning that number has risen to 230 million.

And it's not just wealthy countries that are rapidly changing as a result of incoming migrants, countries that are classed as "less developed" have also seen the number of migrants increase by 25 million since 1990.

Here are six other interesting facts that come out of the data:

The biggest age group is the 65+

There are 18.5 million of them, compared 5.8 million migrants aged 0-4

The region that has the most migrants is Europe

But you might be surprised how close behind Asia is.

The country with the most migrants is the USA

Though the data here doesn't take into account territory size.

The place with the most migrants as a % of the population is the Holy See

Which has little in common with the other places with the highest ratios of international migrants

The country with the least migrants is Tuvalu

In case Tuvalu is new to you, read a dispatch from one of our journalists writing in Funafuti, Tuvalu. I'm told by a contact at the Foreign Office that there is one Brit living in Nauru who meets with the British consulate from time to time for a whisky.

The country where women are the biggest proportion of migrants is Nepal

With 68.3% of its migrants being women, Nepal has the highest concentration of female migrants in the world. The lowest is to be found in Bangladesh, where just 13.4% of migrants are women

Can you do more with this data?

• Download the full spreadsheet
• Contact us at data@theguardian.com
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