What are the largest migrant communities around where you live?

31 comments

1. Definitely Ukrainians in Bucharest due to obvious reasons.

   The biggest change is hearing Russian/Ukrainian on the streets, historically we never had good relationships with Ukraine and Russia is simply hated here, so you would never hear these languages.

2. Turks. Because of the coal mines that used to be in the area. The Italian community is also fairly large in that regard, although you tend to notice them a lot less because they assimilate better. Turks have this distinct look and the wives often dress in robes and wear a hijab.

   It is somewhat sobering to notice that some Turks who have lived here perhaps twenty years can still barely get by in Dutch. Their children, having been born here often also still talk with a distinct accent.

3. I’m from a small town, 25 years ago there were not many migrants. When I grew up in the 2000s the biggest migrant group were the so called “Russian Germans”, ethnic Germans who returned to germany after the dissolution of the ussr from Russia and central Asia. Due to the oppression of German culture and language in the ussr and the fact that they often brought their ethnic Russian families with them, they were seen more as Russians than Germans by the native population.

   The when Germany implemented freedom of movement for the countries of the first Eastern EU enlargement in 2011, many Poles came as labour migrants, three years later the same for Romanians and Bulgarians.

   In 2015, of course a big wave of asylum seekers, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan came.

   And most recently on 2022, more than a million people from Ukraine found refuge in Germany.

4. >What are the largest migrant communities around where you live?

   11.1% of the population of Navarre are immigrants (73 475 people), who have not been naturalised.

   The principal nationalities of these immigrants are, in descending order, Morocco (16 613, 22.6%) Romania (7 730, 10.5%), Colombia, Bulgaria, Portugal, Ecuador, Peru, Algeria and China.

   >And if you feel there’s been a big change recently or not really/at all.

   Between 2012 and 2017, the census data shows that there was a decrease in the immigrant population, but for the last five years there has been a steady increase. Between 2021 and 2022, for example, the population of immigrants grew by 2 034 people, which is an increase of 2.8%.

5. In the area where I live it’s definitely Polish, followed by Romanians/Bulgarians. There’s a lot of agriculture work here which draws a lot of Eastern European labour migrants. And they’ve expanded to also work in warehouses/logistics in the area.

   This is all relatively new. A few years ago you wouldn’t have had the Romanians/Bulgarians and a decade ago barely any Poles. And the last few years you’re also seeing the occasional person of Middle Eastern or sub-Saharan African origin because there’s a lot more settled refugees here now compared to before.

   In the country overall it’s mostly Moroccans and Turks who have been here since the ’60s and ’70s but from what I’ve seen they mostly live in the cities, including the smaller ones, but not so much towns.

6. Pakistanis. I live in a city with one of the highest percentages of Pakistani immigrants in Italy actually. It’s usually families settling down here, with a few occasional single middle-aged men.

   Also Africans (Nigeria, Ghana, Morocco, Tunisia). Differently from Maghrebis, Subsaharan Africans are usually single men. Not really that many families that I know of – although I’ve seen a few – but yeah definitely fewer than Pakistani families.

7. For Vienna, in 2023, it‘s:

   1. Serbia with about 100 000 people

   2. Turkey with about 76 000 people

   3. Germany with about 69 000 people

   4. Poland with about 55 000 people

   These have been the biggest groups of foreigners for quite some time, the most noticeable change is of course an increase in Ukrainians compared to the years before.

   Overall, out of the now 2 million people in Vienna, 1,1 million were born in Austria, while 880 000 were born someplace else.

   Source: https://www.wien.gv.at/menschen/integration/daten-fakten/bevoelkerung-migration.html#:~:text=Wanderung%20zwischen%20Wien%20und%20dem,in%20ein%20anderes%20Land%20weggezogen.

8. In my neighbourhood in London the biggest communities are French, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, Somali, Polish and Syrian.

   In general less Europeans are choosing the UK as a migration destination since Brexit. With India being the main source of immigration to the UK.

9. I’m from a middling sized city in the English Midlands where about 40% of the population are from various minority groups – this is less than in Birmingham or Leicester but obviously still a substantial chunk of the population. White British are a plurality in every ward of the city and the majority in most. The 40% stat only represents the city’s council area which only contains about half the population, really the urban area is more like 25% from ethnic minorities.

   Distribution within the city follows a doughnut pattern. The city centre has relatively few ethnic minority residents (not many people live in the city centre anyway), is surrounded by inner city and inner suburban areas with large ethnic minority populations, which are in turn surrounded by outer suburbs and outlying towns which are generally >90% White British. Some of the city’s outer suburbs are quite well off, a lot of the outlying towns aren’t.

   There’s quite a large and distinct British Pakistani community who substantially live in one postcode area of the city, this is a generally deprived area and Pakistanis tend to be a relatively poor minority group on the whole. Conversely Indians (of whom there are fewer) are more concentrated in suburbs and tend to be more middle class. There’s little love lost between these two populations, as in many places, but they don’t overlap hugely in settlement either.

   There’s a relatively large Black British population, historically this was made up of people from the Caribbean but these days origins in Sub-Saharan Africa are more common. The latter group is interestingly concentrated in areas which had large Caribbean populations following postwar immigration despite being different waves of immigration from very different places.

   The city has had a noticeable Polish and Eastern European population since the Second World War and some of the coal mines in the city were known for having a lot of Polish miners. There’s been a big increase in the number of Eastern Europeans in the city since 2004 as in most British cities, but they still tend to live in areas associated with that community. This is probably the big change of recent decades. There’s probably a few more Turkish/Eastern Mediterranean people around now as well but they’re not very numerous or noticeable.

10. In Sweden as a whole about 20% of the population were born abroad. The top three origin countries in 2022 were Syria with 197 799 people, Iraq with 146 831 people and Finland with 133 083 people.

    The origin countries with largest population in my hometown are Iraq and Finland, each with about 15 000 more people than the runner ups Iran and Syria. For my current town, the largest migrant community come from Iraq, who are about 3 000 more than the Syrians, who make up the second largest group.

11. Poles , Lithuanians, Somalis, Swedes, Pakistanis, Iraqis, Germans, Filippinos, Viet, Iranians, Thais, Russians, Aghanis, Danes, Turks, Indians, Bosnians and Romanians this is Nationally in Bergen its

    Poles: 6.883
    Lithuanians: 2.340
    Somalians: 2.026
    Iraqis: 1.924
    Syrians: 1.688
    Germans: 1.587
    Eritreans: 1.557
    Viet: 1.358
    Romanians: 1.346
    Filipinos: 1.280

12. In my town with the population of around 230k, there was always some groups of Vietnamese as far as I remember, with some Russian speaking people here and there, but we weren’t able to tell where they came from exactly. For an average Pole they were all “Ruscy” (Ruskies). Now, apart from a huge influx of Ukrainians – obviously – and Belarusians, I see more Philipino people, usually women. Not much, but still someone who you wouldn’t see on the street 10 years ago.

13. The biggest language after German, French and Italian is Serbocroatian.

    Now, it depends a bit on what you mean by “migrant communities”. There is no Little Italy or something. But a whole lot of Italian restaurants. They’re so well integrated that you don’t really register as migrants. They just kinda belong here. Statistics say that of all the Foreigners in the country but without diplomats and asylum seekers, 15.7 % are Italians and 15.01% are Germans.

    Portugal is next with about 13% of all foreigners.

14. Vietnamese, Slovak, nowadays also Ukrainians. There are also people from other former Soviet countries, most notably Russia, Belarus, but I feel like there’s a growing Georgian community too.

    I moved to Prague after the Ukrainian war has started, before that, I was here in 2016 and you didn’t really hear Russian or Ukrainian on the streets, now you do. Also there are a lot of Russian and Ukrainian grocery stores, which is great, because some of that food is also my comfort food.

15. In no particular order: Turks, Moroccans, former colonies (Suriname. Dutch Antilles, Indo’s (mixed Dutch Indonesian)), Poles, Americans (unironically), Chinese, refugee communities(Ukrainians, Syrians, Ethiopians, Somalians, Eritreans, Iraqi, Afghans) and I live near the Hague, so pretty much all embassies, ICC and other international staff also live nearby. Also lots of people from other EU countries, but you can only tell when you ask or catch an accent.

    Around 1/4-1/3 of the people around visibly have a non-native heritage, so it’s probably closer to 1/2 of people having a foreign heritage.

16. Statistically in switzerland its Italian, german, portugese, french and kosovo. In that order.

    Altho where i live there are almost no french, as i live in the german part and the french are all in the french part. I also dont know many portugese. I think they are mostly in the alpine towns it seems.

    Around here its mostly germans, italians and kosovo. In fact the city of zurich is over 10 percent german nationals at this point.

    All 3 of these groups are actually much larger than statistics would suggest, as many have gotten naturalised. And ironically the germans are actually the most identifiable, after a long time, as they are the least likely to learn the local dialects, because their language is close enough to not need it.

17. Arabs are the largest immigrant group by far here. Mostly Syrians and Iraqis, but also from other countries in the Middle East. There are also quite a lot of Somalis, although a lot fewer than Arabs. These groups have all mostly come in the last 10-20 years, and are often quite segregated from native Swedes still.

    There are also quite a lot of eastern and southern Europeans here, such as Albanians, Bosnians, Serbs, Croatians, Macedonians, Poles, Romanians and Greeks. Many of these groups came here in the 80s, 90s or early 00s and have children who are born and have grown up in Sweden. They often often don’t really feel much like immigrants anymore, as they speak fluent Swedish and are often very integrated into Swedish society, definitely compared to immigrants from the Middle East.

    Immigrants from eastern and southern Asia are actually on the other hand quite few here. The largest of these groups are people from Thailand, followed by people from Vietnam – and in my city there is also quite a lot of people from India compared with other Swedish cities.

18. There are no migrant communities around here, maybe if I searched hard I could find some foreign individuals. But if I were to travel over 10 km to nearby town, there is small Vietnamese community there.

19. Well leaving refugees from UA aside, probably Turks and Arabs. In the past few years, south Asians have been showing up for work and even a few Africans, most I met were from Ethiopia. Not really much of a change, tbh. Turks and Arabs came in the 80s and 90s, and are largely integrated into the mainstream by now, we shall see about the newcomers since the influx seems to be much larger.

20. I’d say in general in Spain the biggest immigrant populations come from Africa, especially Morocco, and Spanish speaking countries from America, all of those for obvious reasons.

    There are lots of Moroccans, Nigerians, Senegaleses, Mexicans, Argentinians, Chileans, Colombians, Ecuatorians, and, especially, Venezuelans. There are also a lot of Romanians, which to be honest I don’t really know the exact origin of that influx.

    Albeit rarely, I have also seen (mainly at work) people from Ukraine, Russia (actually met some weeks ago a very cool Russian guy from Dagestan while I was fishing with a friend and we talked about fishing in the Russian rivers. He has been living here for some years now), Italy, Sweden, the UK and so on.

21. Fairly typical for a place in or just outside south London. The biggest group in my area are Sub-Saharan Africans (10%) almost entirely from Nigeria. After that its closely followed by South Asians (9%), mostly from India I believe. A distant third are Europeans primarily from Poland and Romania (about 6%). All these newely arrived immigrants I’ve noticed are largely from more urban parts of London. Usually new families, though often the parents are mid thirties or early forties with very young kids.

    About fifteen years ago there were hardly any immigrants in this area. South Asians were numerous in some concentrated spots, but black people were so rare that the few that did exist were often treated like exotic animals. Like most areas around South London, immigrants from London are moving outward, so previously white British dominated areas are becoming more diverse. My area is a typical example of that.

22. Where I am in Cornwall, UK, we honestly didn’t see *any* black people at all until something like 2008/9. It was so rare that the locals didn’t quite know what to make of it – they were never malicious, just sort of… bemused. Growing up here, there were none. Everyone was white. Chinese were condensed solely around their takeaways and were never seen anywhere else. Muslims may as well have been a total myth.

    Once they built the university, things started to become more cosmopolitan. Now it’s something like 80-20 white/black, with a larger melting pot of nationalities and religions. On my right side is a Polish lady and her British husband, on the left a Spanish family, and across the road is a quiet black family I *think* are from Ghana. I suspect they have been through some shit or are simply getting used to being around so many whites; they flinch when I say good morning, but they’re warming, slowly. Everyone else in my estate is predominantly white British.

    A bit further afield, we have some large communities of Polish, Serbian and Russian, and quite a few Turkish in town who run the fast-food joints, a handful of Thai and a smattering of Indian. We get a *lot* of German and Dutch tourists, but that doesn’t really count as they only stay a week or two.

    Fortunately, while older Cornish tend to be isolationist at best and outright racist at worst behind closed doors, I have never once witnessed any overt racism or bullshit. The locals *despise* students, but it’s not related to their ethnicity or nationality; it’s because they take parking spaces, tend to be messy and loud, and the Council builds lots of housing for them instead of needful local people.

    Personally, I love it. I used to travel, but I’ve been ill a couple of years and can’t do squat. Now all the countries come to me!

23. I live in Huddersfield, a university and industrial town of around 100-150,000, depending on where you draw the boundaries. I would estimate that at least 25% of the long-term population of the town (i.e. other than students) is of non-European origin, which I would tentatively break down as:

    – 15% Pakistani;

    – 4% African-Caribbean (like Americans, we tend to say “Black” in everyday speech, but “African-Caribbean” is a sort of polite, academic and administrative way of saying, “people with recent Jamaican or other West Indian ancestry, usually second- or third generation”. Hardly anyone says “West Indian” now.

    – 4% Other South Asian, mostly Sikh and Bangladeshi.

    – 2% Others – Kurds, Arabs, Africans, very small numbers of Chinese people.

    The first three groups are not rapidly growing as far as I can tell, at least not through immigration, although they are dispersing out of their traditional ethnic neighborhoods. The biggest change I’ve noticed in the last 15 years is the increased number of Chinese students and, more recently, Indian students. The Asian students don’t seem to be settling permanently, or perhaps in some cases they are moving to bigger cities like Leeds after getting work visas. Also there are more Africans (I don’t know which nationalities, but a former church has become an Eritrean community centre), I don’t hear Polish or other Slavic languages spoken much nowadays, probably because many of the Eastern Europeans have gone back to their countries of origin, but I would guess that many have stayed but now only speak English in public.

24. Middling town in England.

    According to the ONS, the largest migrant community is the Welsh. They seem reasonably well integrated.

    Next largest is Polish at about 2%. Very little change in the past 10 years.

25. Traditionally Moroccan, from the era of migrant workers. Then from around 2004 we started to have a large Polish community and the last couple of years the Afghan community got very big in a short time periode.

26. For Portugal the largest migrant communities are Brazilian and Cape Verdean.

    Ukrainians might have actually overtaken Cape-Verdeans again though. In the late 90s early 00s they were the second largest community and and since the war started we have been one of the largest asylum destinations.

27. In my corner of France the British would make up the largest migrant community, though many of them don’t think of themselves as immigrants. The only change post Brexit has been a trickle of older Brits selling up and going back to the UK. Conversely, a smaller but notable trickle of younger (as in working age) Brits moving here.

28. I would say Polish. There’s a wee area of town where they’ve set up shops. They socialise in a different way so I don’t meet Polish people in pubs. I think they prefer drinking in houses. There’s obviously enough of a Polish population to justify shops, but I don’t meet or see any of them outside of the workplace. For decades we’ve had Italian, Chinese and Indian people.

29. In Belgium, it depends on the area, but I would say that the main group people think about if you say “immigrants” in Belgium are Turkish or Moroccan, or just islamic immigrants in general (so also Afghan, Algerian and so on).

    In the city (and region) where I live in Belgium, it are rather people from Sub-Sahara Africa, mainly Congo. There are many other nationalities as well of course, but here they are clearly the main group. The biggest issue we have with this immigrant group is not culturally, but rather language-related, as they often speak French, but no Dutch and Dutch is the native and only official language of Flanders. Their children often speak Dutch though, as they go to school here.

    Of course many French, Dutch, Italians … moved to Belgium over the years as well, but even the Italians are seen as full natives nowadays. In the fifties and sixties, they were still treated as real immigrants though. I think that the same will happen with the Congolese, as so many of their children integrate so well and so fast in Flanders. I am only afraid of the islamic integration, as their beliefs and behaviour are often very far away from who we are as a society today. It even seems to be getting worse with this third generation of islamic immigrants now.

30. I live in Neukölln, Berlin, which has a huge concentration of immigrants (myself included). Around 48% of the population has some kind of immigration background, up to 65% in the northern part which is closer to the city center.

    The district is in former West Berlin, but it bordered the wall before it fell, so it was a pretty undesirable place to live during that time. As a result a lot of the “guest workers” who moved to Berlin during the 60’s and 70’s ended up living here because it was the cheapest part of the city. Most of them were Turkish and that is still the district’s largest migrant group at 11%.

    That‘s closely followed by people from Arabic-speaking countries (especially Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria) at 9%. You can see that this area has had a big Arab population for a long time, many of the storefronts on Sonnenallee are in Arabic.

    Then there are also Polish people (5%) and people from former Yugoslavia (4%). The northern part of Neukölln has also gentrified a lot and it‘s very common to see people from other Western European countries along with Americans and Australians there. There‘s kind of a dividing line— on Karl-Marx Straße and Sonnenallee you hear a lot of Arabic being spoken, and then walk a few blocks west to Weserstraße where suddenly it switches over to English.

    I have kind of complex feelings about living here as an American because I’m aware that I’m probably contributing to the gentrification aspect— but at the same time, there‘s something really freeing about being surrounded by so many different cultures. When I was living elsewhere in Germany I always felt afraid of sticking out or not being “German enough,” and here I don’t have to worry about that.

31. First it was the British, then Sicilians, then eastern Europeans (Bulgarians, serbs Albanians) and now Indians and Pakistani. I live in a town where the foreign-born population has now just about surpassed the locals, so we have a very diverse mix.