Although many Maltese might believe that the most common countries of origin of its resident foreign-born population in Malta are of African or Arab origin, the majority of the foreigners living on our tiny islands are, in fact, from the United Kingdom.

The information is revealed in maps, based on United Nation statistics showing the most common nationality of foreign born population in countries all over Europe. The statistic also includes information gathered by Eurostat, the statistic office of the European Union. The maps are based on information gathered in 2015. The maps also take into account Eurostat data on asylum applicants between January 2015 and June 2016, in an attempt to update the figures for the migration crisis.

When looking at the percentage of immigrant (foreign born) population, it seems that more than 9% of the population living in Malta are from the United Kingdom.

UK citizens are the most common nationality of foreign born population in Ireland and Cyprus with 11.1% and 16.7% respectively.  

People from India are the largest foreign nationals residing in the UK, the Algerians are thriving in France, Moroccans in Spain and Romanians are most common in Italy and Hungary.

The series of maps which are aimed at simplifying the data provided by Eurostat and the UN Populations Division are the works of a Czech linguist, mathematician and artist Jakub Marian.

The statistics also look into the percentage difference of increase or decrease in foreign country national’s population for each country between the period of 2010 and 2015. Malta’s British population was one of which saw significant increase, with a percentage point increase of +1.6%. The highest foreign country national increase in these last five years was registered in Norway, with a 3.6% increase of Polish nationals in this same period.