On the day that the UK’s quarterly asylum statistics are released, Danny Dorling, professor of human geography at Sheffield University, reminds us to take a comparative perspective when looking at refugee flows.
An expert on social inequalities, Danny talks us through his reworking of the world map to illustrate which countries host the most refugees. Featured on a recent BBC programme, this map is part of a series that demonstrates how visually mapping global inequities can totally reframe the way we see the world.
“This map shows the territory of destination for both refugees and internally displaced people as they were located around the world just seven years ago.
“The map today would look very similar. The internal movement of people explains why territories experiencing recent instability can simultaneously be a major destination of displaced people, for example Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Colombia is so very large because so many people are internally displaced there. In 2003 there were an estimated 15 million refugees and internally displaced persons.
“The Middle East and South America are the regions in which most displaced people live; Pakistan, Iran and Germany are the territories that provide asylum to most people from outside their borders.
“Britain provides sanctuary to relatively few refugees, only five for every thousand people living in that country are refugees.
“Denmark provides sanctuary to three times as many people per usual resident, Germany more than twice as many (and it has a higher population), the Netherlands twice as many, and Sweden four times as many.”
To see the world in ways you may have never seen it before, visit http://www.worldmapper.org
Tags: Danny Dorling
Posted by Sara Ayech