|The funniest migrants are perhaps street musicians as this group of Romanian musicians
in the streets of Brussels.
Not so nice are the Romanian beggars
on the streets and in the subway of Brussels. |
There are living 32,5 million foreigners in the European Union. This is 6,5% of the total European population. Most foreigners – 20,2 million - are coming from outside of the European Union, Turkey and Morocco. Foreigners are much younger than the ‘original’ European population. The average foreigner is 34,4 years old, the average ‘original’ European population is 41,5 years old.
In the 20th century the ‘traditional’ migration countries were Turkey and Morocco. Since the ‘new’ middle and eastern European states like Poland, Rumania, Lithuania, Bulgaria etc. have become members of the EU (2004 – 2007), migration of these countries has grown very fast.
Polish migrants together with Lithuanians and Slovaks went mainly to the northern Western European countries like Great Britain, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands. Rumanians and others went mostly to Italy, Greece and sometimes also Germany.
Poland became a member of the EU in 2004. The Centre of Migration Research in Warsaw informs that the amount of temporary Polish migrants increased from nearly 1,5 million to 2,3 million between 2004 and 2007, which is 6,6% of the total Polish population. Since the European crisis the amount of migrants has decreased a little bit.
Rumania became a member of the EU in 2007, but migration started already earlier. The amount of Rumanian migrants doubled until 2,1 million between 2005 and 2009 which is about 7% of the total Rumanian population.
Migrants send a lot of money to their country of origin. The total amount of money in 2010 was 31.2 billion Euro. From this amount stayed 8,9 billion within the European Union. 22,3 Billion was send to countries outside of the EU.
Poland, Rumania and Portugal receive most of the money of their fellow country migrants as is shown on the graphic.
A special category of migrants are the so called border workers, those who earn their living just on the other side of the border and the seasonal workers. They together earned 47 billion Euro in 2010.