Migration and Belonging: Total Immigration across 55 Destinations and Irregular Residence in 13 Author

This study examines how the share of immigrants in a destination country’s population relates to economic conditions and five dimensions of belonging: institutional access, perceived care from government and neighbors, dependable support from family or friends, and reported discrimination. The analysis covers total international migrant residence in 55 countries. For 12 European countries and the United States, it also compares total immigration and estimated irregular residence within the same destinations. The article includes comparative profiles of 30 countries. Across the broader sample, the total immigrant share correlates positively with GDP per capita (r = 0.74) and human development (0.59). It correlates negatively with income inequality in the 52 countries with Gini data (−0.33) and positively with reported discrimination in the 53 countries with discrimination data (0.50). The latter correlation falls to 0.39 after controlling for freedom of expression. Within the same 13 destinations, inequality correlates 0.03 with the total immigrant share and 0.84 with the estimated irregular resident share. The corresponding correlations with reported discrimination are 0.28 and 0.72. Both irregular-residence correlations weaken when the United States is omitted. These findings describe differences among destination societies. Understanding immigrants’ own experiences of belonging requires information about individual respondents and their residence status. The country-level data, analysis code, and results are available in the replication package at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.24060999.