3. Muslim population change
Muslims are the world’s fastest-growing and second-largest religious group. In the Middle East-North Africa region, they make up 94% of the population.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Muslims are the world’s fastest-growing and second-largest religious group. In the Middle East-North Africa region, they make up 94% of the population.
For each destination country, this Appendix tabulates the methods of deriving the religious composition of migrant stocks from various origin countries. We only estimate the religious composition of origin-destination country pairs that appear in the United Nations’ migrant stock database. For example, for Afghanistan, the UN only provides estimates of the number of migrants from […]
Migrants tend to move to regions where their religion is common, but some regions also see large influxes of migrants from minority religious groups.
Catholics remain the largest religious group in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, while second-largest groups vary.
Christians are the largest religious group among migrants. Most Christian migrants live in Europe or North America.
Migration outpaced global population growth by 83% to 47% from 1990-2020. Buddhist and Muslim migrants more than doubled in number during this time.
As of June 2025, the country’s foreign-born population had shrunk by more than a million people, marking its first decline since the 1960s.
Religiously unaffiliated people are underrepresented among migrants, making up 13% of migrants but 23% of the global population.
Muslims account for 29% of global migrants and most commonly live in the Middle-East North Africa and Asia-Pacific regions.
Buddhist migrants – who make up 4% of all migrants – are heavily concentrated in the Asia-Pacific region.
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