Pakistani emigrants settle in Europe and the US, but the Gulf states only offer temporary stays

Remittances by Pakistani migrants account for roughly eight per cent of Pakistan's GDP, comfortably exceeding the country’s textile export earnings, its largest merchandise export sector.

By The Immigrant Times

Pakistani emigrants in Britain, Dubai and the US. (Photo Dubai by Ross Domoney/Demotix; Photo USA depicts Muhammad Ali Abdullah, who received a Master degree from Alabama University, photographed by Jennifer Alsabrook-Turner)

February 2026: Pakistan ranks sixth globally by diaspora size, with over nine million nationals living abroad, and outflows have accelerated sharply in recent years. Fewer than 230,000 Pakistanis left for work abroad in 2021; by 2023, that figure had reached 862,625 in a single year, according to the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment (BEOE). A cumulative total of more than 13.5 million have emigrated since the BEOE began keeping records in 1971.

The acceleration reflects a country under acute economic stress. Inflation reached 30 per cent in 2023, the official unemployment rate hit a record 8.5 per cent, and the Pakistani rupee lost approximately 20 per cent of its value against the US dollar in that year alone, making it one of the worst-performing currencies in the world. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which Pakistan approached for its 24th bailout programme in 2023, has required successive rounds of austerity in return for support. For an increasing number of Pakistanis, emigration has become the most rational response to conditions at home.

Overseas Pakistanis remitted $34.6 billion in 2024, roughly eight per cent of GDP, dwarfing the $3 billion IMF standby arrangement secured the previous year. Yet the departure of doctors, engineers, and managers in rapidly increasing numbers is depleting the human capital the country needs to sustain any long-term recovery. Between 2022 and 2023 alone, the number of highly skilled workers leaving Pakistan rose by 119 per cent, according to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2023-24.

History of Pakistani migration

Pakistan's emigration story begins with the violent division of British India in 1947, setting approximately 18 per cent of Pakistan's initial emigrant population in motion, as millions crossed newly drawn borders in both directions. But the migration patterns that shaped today's diaspora took form in the decades that followed, driven by two distinct forces: the pull of post-war labour demand in Britain, and the later pull of oil wealth in the Gulf.

Britain's connection with Pakistani migrants is rooted in the Commonwealth and in the labour shortages of postwar reconstruction. From the 1950s onwards, men from a relatively narrow set of regions, principally Azad Jammu and Kashmir, the Potohar Plateau in northern Punjab, and the Seraiki belt in southern Punjab, were recruited into British textile mills, foundries, and transport networks.

The migration was self-reinforcing: established migrants created information networks and remittance channels that made it easier for others from the same districts to follow. Families remained in Pakistan while breadwinners worked abroad, a pattern that would persist for decades and shape the character of British Pakistani communities to this day. By the time Britain tightened immigration controls in the 1970s, a substantial and rooted community had established itself, particularly in cities such as Bradford, Birmingham, Manchester, and Glasgow.

The oil price shock of 1973 opened a second major migration corridor. The Gulf states, flush with petrodollar revenues and embarking on vast infrastructure programmes, required enormous quantities of labour. Pakistan, with a young and underemployed male population, was well placed to supply it. The government formalised this through the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment, established to regulate and facilitate the flow of workers to Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Nearly 96 per cent of the migrants tracked by the BEOE between 1971 and 2023 were placed in the Gulf region, predominantly in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Sources: BEOE, Government of Pakistan; UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA); IOM Pakistan Migration Snapshot, 2019.

Recent surge in Pakistani emigration

The years since 2021 have seen Pakistani emigration reach levels. The Covid pandemic had temporarily suppressed outflows, with fewer than 300,000 departures recorded in both 2020 and 2021. Once restrictions lifted, however, the numbers rebounded with extraordinary force: 832,339 departures in 2022, followed by 862,625 in 2023. In the first half of 2024 alone, a further 325,142 Pakistanis left the country.

The drivers are not difficult to identify. Pakistan's economy entered a prolonged crisis marked by spiralling debt, a currency collapse, and the withdrawal of subsidies under IMF-mandated austerity measures. Electricity bills rose sharply after energy subsidies were cut, pushing many households below the poverty line. Corruption and political instability, four different governments in four years, eroded confidence in any near-term recovery. A Gallup Pakistan survey found that 37 per cent of Pakistanis expressed a desire to leave the country, with the proportion rising among the educated. Long queues outside passport offices and foreign embassies became a visible symbol of a population voting with its feet.

The surge has reignited a fierce domestic debate about brain drain. The Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) recorded that the two-year total of highly skilled migrants leaving between 2022 and 2023, some 107,000, exceeded the entire five-year total from 2017 to 2021.

Applications to emigrate among doctors rose by 151 per cent between 2011 and 2024, among engineers by 172 per cent, and among managers by a remarkable 990 per cent. Not all analysts accept that the brain drain narrative is fully supported by the data; some argue that unskilled and semi-skilled workers still dominate the outflow, but the direction of travel among professionals is unmistakable.

Sources: BEOE, Government of Pakistan; Pakistan Economic Survey 2023-24; PIDE Knowledge Brief No. 112, 2024; Gallup Pakistan Migration Patterns Report, 2025.

Categories of Pakistani migrants

Pakistani emigrants do not fit a single profile. The outflow encompasses several distinct categories, each with different motivations, destinations, and prospects.

The largest group by volume consists of low-skilled and semi-skilled labour migrants, principally men, heading to the Gulf states on fixed-term contracts. In 2024, 58 per cent of the 727,381 Pakistanis who legally left for employment abroad fell into this category, according to BEOE data. These workers, in construction, domestic service, manufacturing, and transport, typically leave their families behind and remit a high proportion of their earnings. Their migration is temporary by design, tied to employer-sponsored visa systems in Gulf countries that offer no pathway to permanent residence.

A second and growing category consists of skilled and professional migrants heading to Western countries. Doctors, engineers, IT professionals, nurses, and academics are increasingly choosing the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, the United States, and Germany over the Gulf. Unlike their counterparts in the Gulf, these migrants frequently move with their immediate families and arrive with the intention, or at least the possibility, of permanent settlement. It is this group whose departure concerns Pakistan's policymakers most.

A third category covers those seeking asylum or refugee status, predominantly in European countries. Driven by a combination of economic desperation and, in some cases, genuine fear of persecution, these migrants often undertake dangerous irregular journeys. Italy, Greece, Germany, France, and Spain have seen the largest numbers of Pakistani asylum applications in recent years.

Family reunification constitutes a fourth, quieter stream, particularly relevant to the United Kingdom, where established Pakistani communities have for decades sponsored the immigration of spouses, children, and elderly relatives from Pakistan. This flow has been subject to repeated policy changes by successive British governments and remains a sensitive and contested area of UK immigration law.

Sources: BEOE, Government of Pakistan; IOM Pakistan Migration Snapshot; ICMPD Migration Trends Analysis Report, 2024; UK Home Office Immigration Statistics.

Destination countries for Pakistani migrants

The geography of Pakistani emigration divides broadly into two arcs: the Gulf, which absorbs the majority by volume, and the West, which attracts the minority by number but the majority by skill level and permanence.

Saudi Arabia remains the single largest destination, receiving approximately half of all registered Pakistani migrants in 2023. The UAE is the second largest, followed by Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait. Together, the Gulf Cooperation Council states host an estimated four million Pakistanis, nearly half the entire diaspora. Malaysia has also emerged as a significant destination for Pakistani labour, though on a smaller scale.

In the West, the United Kingdom stands apart. With an estimated 1.6 million people of Pakistani origin, Britain hosts the largest Pakistani community outside the Middle East and the most historically rooted.

The United States, particularly New York, Chicago, and New Jersey, hosts a substantial community estimated at around 700,000, characterised by relatively high educational and income levels. Canada and Australia have seen rapidly growing Pakistani communities in recent years, driven partly by their points-based immigration systems, which actively recruit skilled professionals.

Within continental Europe, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Norway host the largest Pakistani populations, though numbers remain smaller than in the Anglophone world.

A noteworthy recent trend is the diversification of destinations beyond these established corridors, with Pakistani workers and professionals increasingly appearing in countries such as Romania, Portugal, and various Gulf-adjacent economies, as traditional routes become more competitive or restricted.

Sources: UNDESA International Migrant Stock 2024; BEOE Country-Wise Emigration Database 2023; Wikipedia Pakistani Diaspora (citing Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis data).

Skills and professions of Pakistani emigrants

The skills profile of Pakistani emigrants is more varied and more contested than the narratives around other South Asian diasporas. India is globally associated with IT professionals and corporate executives; the Philippines has built an internationally recognised system for exporting healthcare workers and seafarers. Pakistan's emigrant workforce is harder to characterise simply, because it spans an unusually wide spectrum.

At one end sits the dominant historical flow: manual and semi-skilled workers heading to the Gulf in construction, hospitality, and domestic service. At the other end, a fast-growing cohort of professionals is leaving for Western countries. Pakistani nurses, for instance, have been leaving in significantly increasing numbers, a trend documented in the Pakistan Migration Report 2024, which tracks a steep upward curve in nurse emigration between 2011 and 2023. Pakistani doctors have long been present in the British National Health Service and in American hospitals, where they are among the more numerous groups of foreign-trained physicians.

In the technology sector, Pakistan has developed a significant, if still underappreciated, pool of software engineers, developers, and IT professionals. The Pakistan Software Export Board has positioned the country as a competitive outsourcing hub, and Pakistani tech workers are increasingly visible in the labour markets of the Gulf, the UK, and North America. Engineers of various disciplines, particularly civil and structural engineers whose skills align with Gulf construction demand, have historically formed a significant professional stream.

The critical question for Pakistan is whether this professional outflow represents a permanent loss or a temporary circulation of talent. The evidence, for now, points more toward loss than gain. A Gallup Pakistan survey found that two-thirds of professionals, including doctors, expressed a desire to work overseas, with many stating no intention of returning.

Sources: Pakistan Migration Report 2024, GIDS Lahore; PIDE Brain Drain Report; Pakistan Economic Survey 2023-24; Gallup Pakistan Migration Patterns Report, 2025.

Irregular migration

Alongside the documented flows runs an undocumented one. Pakistani nationals have become one of the most significant groups of irregular migrants attempting to reach Europe, and the consequences have at times been fatal.

Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, has identified Pakistani men as among the most common male victims of trafficking into Europe, predominantly for forced labour in construction, agriculture, and other sectors. The routes are well established, overland through Iran and Turkey, then by sea across the Mediterranean or by land through the Balkans, and are controlled by smuggling networks that charge fees running to several thousand dollars per person. Those fees are often funded by family members in Pakistan or by loans that leave migrants in debt bondage to their traffickers on arrival.

The human cost was brought into sharp relief on 2 January 2025, when a small boat capsized near Spain's Canary Islands. Of the 50 people who drowned, 44 were Pakistani nationals. The tragedy was not an isolated incident. Pakistani migrants have been dying in the Mediterranean, the Aegean, and the Atlantic for years, in numbers that rarely receive sustained international attention.

Within Europe, Italy, Greece, France, Germany, and Hungary have received the largest volumes of Pakistani asylum applications. Many of those who arrive irregularly subsequently apply for asylum, with varying success rates depending on the country and the individual's circumstances. Others remain undocumented: more than 40,000 Pakistanis were estimated to be residing illegally in Europe in 2022, according to the Pakistan Migration Report 2024. The combination of tightening restrictions in Gulf states and deteriorating conditions at home suggests this irregular flow is unlikely to diminish in the near term.

Sources: Frontex; IOM Pakistan Migration Snapshot; Pakistan Migration Report 2024, GIDS Lahore; Dawn, March 2025.

Women migrants

One of the most striking features of Pakistani emigration data is what is absent from it. Women are almost entirely invisible in the official figures. The BEOE's records, which track registered labour migrants, show female participation in outflows as negligible, reflecting both social and cultural constraints on women's independent mobility and the nature of the labour markets that have historically absorbed Pakistani emigrants.

The Gulf states, which dominate the outflow, operate employer-sponsored visa systems that have, until recently, made it difficult for women to migrate independently for work. Cultural norms within many Pakistani communities, particularly in rural Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, have traditionally expected women to remain with their families while male breadwinners work abroad.

Yet the picture is more complex than the official data suggests. Pakistani women do migrate, as students, as accompanying spouses, as healthcare professionals, and increasingly as independent workers in countries with more open visa regimes. The Pakistan Migration Report 2024 notes that among the documented female labour migrants who appear in the data, the general worker and domestic worker categories predominate, suggesting that women who do migrate formally are often doing so in low-paid, potentially vulnerable roles.

What the data cannot capture is the experience of women who migrate as part of family reunification, joining husbands or fathers already settled in Britain, North America, or elsewhere, and whose migration is therefore recorded, if at all, under different categories. This group is significant within established diaspora communities, particularly in the UK, yet their experience as migrants in their own right receives almost no dedicated policy or research attention. Closing this gap is not merely a statistical matter; it has direct implications for the welfare, integration, and rights of a large but poorly understood population.

Sources: Pakistan Migration Report 2024, GIDS Lahore; IOM Pakistan Migration Snapshot; UN Women Gender Assessment of Skills Development and Overseas Employment Opportunities for Women in Pakistan.

Remittances by Pakistani migrants

Few numbers in Pakistan's national accounts are watched as closely as the monthly remittance figures released by the State Bank of Pakistan. In 2024, overseas Pakistanis sent home $34.6 billion, a 31.4 per cent increase on the previous year and a record high. The figure for March 2025 alone reached $4.1 billion, the highest single monthly total ever recorded. Remittances now account for roughly eight per cent of Pakistan's GDP, comfortably exceeding its textile export earnings, its largest merchandise export sector.

The geographic breakdown of remittance flows mirrors the distribution of the diaspora. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are the largest sources, reflecting the sheer volume of Pakistani workers in those countries. The United Kingdom is the third-largest, and its per capita contribution, reflecting the higher earnings of settled, professional migrants, is considerably greater than the Gulf average. The United States, Canada, and Australia also contribute meaningfully.

The economic importance of remittances is not in dispute. They have provided Pakistan with a crucial buffer during successive currency crises, helped maintain foreign exchange reserves, and supported millions of households that depend on income from abroad. Low-skilled Gulf migrants, who typically migrate alone and remit a high proportion of their earnings, are particularly significant contributors relative to their income levels.

However, the relationship between remittances and development is more ambivalent than the headline figures suggest. Critics argue that the Pakistani government has developed a structural dependency on remittance income that actively reduces the incentive to reform domestic labour markets or improve conditions at home. The logic is uncomfortably simple: the more Pakistanis leave and send money back, the less pressure governments face to create jobs or raise wages domestically. Remittances, on this reading, are not a development dividend but a substitute for one.

Sources: State Bank of Pakistan; Pakistan Economic Survey 2023-24; World Bank Remittance Data; Arab News Pakistan, July 2024.

Permanent settlement or temporary stay

Whether Pakistani migrants intend to stay permanently in their destination countries or return home depends greatly on where they have gone and why. The distinction between Gulf migrants and Western migrants is, again, fundamental.

For those in the Gulf, permanent settlement is not an option. The kafala sponsorship system, which ties workers to their employer, and the near-total absence of naturalisation pathways in countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, mean that Pakistani workers in the Gulf are, by legal definition, temporary residents as much as by personal intention. Many have spent decades in the Gulf, returning to Pakistan between contracts and retiring there. The pattern is one of circular migration rather than settlement, with the family home in Pakistan remaining the primary social and emotional anchor.

For those who have moved to Western countries, the picture is very different. Pakistanis in Britain, the United States, Canada, and Australia have generally moved with settlement in mind, or have found that their intentions evolved in that direction over time.

The UK's Pakistani community, now into its third and fourth generation in many cases, is as settled as any immigrant community in the country. More recent arrivals, the professionals who have left since 2021 in growing numbers, appear, from available survey data, to have even stronger intentions of remaining permanently. A Gallup Pakistan survey found that among those who had emigrated or wished to emigrate, a significant majority expressed no intention of returning, a marked shift from the ‘sojourner’ mentality that characterised earlier generations.

This shift has profound implications for Pakistan. Earlier waves of emigrants maintained deep ties to their home communities, invested in property, funded mosques and schools, and eventually retired to Pakistan. If the current generation of professional emigrants settles permanently abroad with less attachment to their origins, both the social and financial connections that have sustained Pakistan's diaspora relationship may weaken over time, even as the raw numbers of those leaving continue to grow.

Sources: IOM Pakistan Migration Snapshot; Gallup Pakistan Migration Patterns Report, 2025; PIDE Knowledge Brief No. 112, 2024; UK Census 2021.

A future article by the Immigrant Times will examine the contributions Pakistani emigrants have made to their destination countries, in particular to Britain, where the community's economic, cultural, and civic footprint over seven decades has benefited the country and its people.

Methodology: This article draws on data from the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment (BEOE), Government of Pakistan; the Pakistan Economic Survey 2023-24; the Pakistan Migration Report 2024 (GIDS, Lahore); the State Bank of Pakistan; the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs; the International Organization for Migration (IOM); the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD); Frontex; Gallup Pakistan; and the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE).

Further reading from The Immigrant Times: Nepali migration || Central Asian migrants in Russia || Undocumented migrants in Malaysia || India expels Rohingya refugees || Immigrant cricketers represent the US at the 2026 World Cup ||

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