GoKawiilHow many people move between countries every year? This seemingly simple — and often highly contentious — question is surprisingly hard to answer. Attempts to do so quickly run into the realities of the existing global capacity to track who is leaving and who is arriving in specific places1,2. Writing in Nature, Gaskin and Abel3 use an artificial-intelligence model to collate data from various sources, providing perhaps the best picture of global migration yet.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-01588-4
References Willekens, F., Massey, D., Raymer, J. & Beauchemin, C. Science 352, 897–899 (2016). Azose, J. J. & Raftery, A. E. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 116, 116–122 (2019). Gaskin, T. & Abel, G. J. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10611-7 (2026). Chi, G., Abel, G. J., Johnston, D., Giraudy, E. & Bailey, M. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 122, e2409418122 (2025). Schewel, K. & Debray, A. in The Palgrave Handbook of South–South Migration and Inequality (eds Crawley, H. & Teye, J. K.) 153–181 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). Xu, Y. et al. Nature Commun. 16, 10372 (2025). Abel, G. J. & Sander, N. Science 343, 1520–1522 (2014). Niva, V. et al. Nature Hum. Behav. 7, 2023–2037 (2023). Download references
Competing Interests The authors declare no competing interests.
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