Foreigners living in the EU are diverse and largely younger than the nationals of the EU Membre States

European Commission Eurostat

Description

Population and social conditions
Target audience: Specialised/Technical

Sujets

• Foreign national
• Member state of the European Union
• Demography
• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: EUROPEAN-COMMISSION-EUROSTAT
• Nombre de lectures: 14
• Langue: English

Extrait

Population and social conditions Author: Katya VASILEVA

S t a t i s t i c s i n f o c u s 45/2010

Foreigners living in the EU are diverse and largely younger than the nationals of the EU Member States The total number of nonnationals (i.e. persons Figure 1: Age structure of national and foreign populations, EU27, 2009 who are not citizens of their country of residence) living on the territory of the EU 85+ Member States on 1 January 2009 was Solid color: national population Bordered: foreign population 80 31.9 million, representing 6.4% of the total EU 75 population. More than one third of them 70 (11.9 million), were citizens of another Member 65 60 State. 55 Studying the composition and the demographics 50 1 of the foreign (nonnational) and foreignborn 45 population is important as these represent a 40 35 significant part of the EU population. Looking 30 for example at the current age structure of 25 nationals and nonnationals separately reveals 20 that nonnationals bring a younger population 15 to the EU (see Figure 1). 10 5 This article presents the latest available figures 0 on the nonnational and foreignborn 3% 2% 1% 0% 1% 2% 3% population usually resident in the EU, EFTA Men Women and Candidate countries on 1 January 2009, broken down by citizenship and country of birth Source: Eurostat (migr_pop1ctz) respectively. In all Member States (except Luxembourg, Ireland, 2 Foreigners account for 6.4% (31.9 mil.) Belgium , Cyprus, Slovakia and Hungary) the of the EU population majority of foreigners are thirdcountry nationals (citizens of a nonEU country), while the opposite In absolute terms, the largest numbers of foreign is true for the EFTA countries Iceland, Norway and citizens reside in Germany, Spain, the United Switzerland. In the case of Latvia and Estonia, the Kingdom, France and Italy. Nonnationals in these proportion of nonEU citizens is particularly large five countries represent more than 75% of the total due to the high number of ‘recognised non 1 EU foreign population. citizens’ (mainly former Soviet Union citizens, In relative terms, the EU Member State with the who are permanently resident in these countries but highest share of foreigners is Luxembourg, where have not acquired Latvian/Estonian citizenship or foreigners make up 43.5% of the usually resident any other citizenship). This phenomenon is also 1 population. In 2009, a high proportion of non reflected in the median age of the foreign nationals (10% or more of the resident population) population of these two countries (see Table 4). was also observed in Latvia, Estonia, Cyprus, Spain, Ireland and Austria, as well as in one of the EFTA countries, Switzerland. 1 2 See Methodological Notes for explanation Based on latest available data