Southern Asia · data through 2024
Pakistan is both a major source of contract and skilled workers and one of the world's largest hosts of refugees, most of them Afghan.
Twenty five year view
These lines show migrant stock, meaning people living outside their birth country at each point in time. They do not show annual arrivals.
Why people move
Labour migration to the Gulf is long established and heavily male, while skilled and student migration to the United Kingdom, North America, and Europe has grown. Afghan communities in Pakistan span four decades and several waves of return pressure.
Connections
Common destinations
Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Oman, United States, Italy
Common origins
Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar
Adapting and finding support
Afghan families in Pakistan face repeated documentation reviews that affect school and work access. Workers abroad depend on employer tied permits that limit bargaining power.
Registration status determines access, so documentation advice comes before anything else.
Use the support guideResearch that explains this pattern
Behavioural economics
A household sends one member abroad to diversify its income, so a harvest failure or a currency collapse at home no longer threatens everyone at once.
Money sent home rises after disasters and downturns, and migration decisions are made by families rather than by individuals.
Oded Stark and David Bloom, the new economics of labour migration, 1985
Psychology
Repeated discrimination, vigilance, and the expectation of rejection accumulate into a chronic health burden.
Health outcomes worsen with time in a hostile setting, even as income and language improve.
Ilan Meyer, minority stress model, extended to immigrant populations
Anthropology
Each person who arrives lowers the cost and risk for the next, through housing, jobs, information, and trust. The route becomes self sustaining.
Corridors persist long after the original cause has faded, and policy alone rarely closes them.
Douglas Massey and colleagues, cumulative causation and network theory
Support inside and beyond Pakistan
Official registration, protector of emigrants services, and recruiter oversight.
Pakistanis taking work abroad
OpenCountry by country guidance for refugees, people seeking asylum, and stateless people.
Refugees and people seeking asylum
OpenAssistance, voluntary return, reintegration, and counter trafficking support through the local office.
Anyone moving, arriving, or returning
OpenThese are public organisations. The project is not affiliated with them and cannot guarantee outcomes. Nothing here is legal advice or an emergency service.
Figures are rounded published estimates. Causes and adaptation differ within every country and should not be read as a verdict about any person.