In continuation of a demographic trend that has been in place in Germany and across much of Western Europe for quite some time, the number of people with migrant backgrounds living in Germany increased considerably in 2022, climbing to a new all-time high, figures from the Federal Republic’s official statistical agency have revealed.
The new figures, published in a press release on Thursday, April 20th, by Germany’s Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), revealed that the number of people living in Germany with so-called “immigration histories” increased by 6.5% in 2022 to a total of 20.2 million—equal to nearly one fourth (24.3%) of the total population of the country.
The number of people with “immigration histories”—defined by the country’s Expert Commission on Integration Capability as those “people who have immigrated to Germany themselves since 1950 (first generation) and their direct descendants (second generation)”—has skyrocketed over the past decade, with the majority having migrated to Germany themselves.
In fact, of the 20.2 million people with “immigration histories” living in Germany today, 15.3 million are new arrivals and have no generational history in the country. Of the 15.3 million, nearly 40%—or 6.1 million people—immigrated between 2013 and 2023.
Compared to Germany’s average age of 47, the average age for immigrants who relocated to the country in the past ten years is, at 30 years old, substantially younger. The majority of migrants arrived from war-torn Syria, at 16%, followed by Romania (7%), Poland (6%), and Ukraine (5%).
Slightly fewer than one in three (30%) of the new arrivals who immigrated in the past decade reported having sought asylum after fleeing their homelands. Meanwhile, 24.2% reported being economic migrants, 23.8% said they had moved to reunify with their families, and 8.2% said they migrated in order to pursue academic endeavors.
