Religion and migration
According to British anthropologist Edward Dutton, religious people are more likely to migrate (there are various reasons postulated, but remains unclear why this is so).[1]
According to Dutton, this partly explains why the British people who left Britain and migrated to America in the colonial period were more religious.
Currently, there are many evangelical Christians and Muslims moving to secular regions (See: Growth of evangelical Christianity in irreligious regions).
According to Pew Forum:
| â | About 3% of the worldâs population has migrated across international borders. While that may seem like a small percentage, it represents a lot of people. If the worldâs 214 million international migrants were counted as one nation, they would constitute the fifth most populous country on the globe, just behind Indonesia and ahead of Brazil.
Faith on the Move, a new study by the Pew Research Centerâs Forum on Religion & Public Life, focuses on the religious affiliation of international migrants, examining patterns of migration among seven major groups: Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, adherents of other religions and the religiously unaffiliated. Christians comprise nearly half â an estimated 106 million, or 49% â of the worldâs 214 million international migrants, the total number of people who reside permanently in a country other than where they were born. (See Defining International Migrants box. All figures in this report are as of 2010.) Muslims make up the second-largest share of people who have migrated across borders â almost 60 million, or 27% Hindus (nearly 11 million) account for 5%) and Buddhists (about 7 million) account for 3%.[3] |
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