This site features an UNHCR dataset that was published by the Guardian in April 2012.
Below is a map with the amount of asylum seekers in Europe in 2011. We zoom in on Europe, because it is where the most asylum seekers go. See the map for the whole world here.
What we see in the data is that the two countries with the largest inflow of asylum seekers are France and Germany. Italy, Sweden and the UK follow.
United Kingdom vs The Netherlands
While the world saw 20% more asylum seekers globally, there are differences on country level. This chart shows the difference between The Netherlands and the UK in the past three years.
Document | asylum seekers 2009 | asylum seekers 2010 | asylum seekers 2011 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Netherlands | 14910 | 13330 | 11590 |
| United Kingdom | 30670 | 22640 | 25420 |
Top 5 fastest growing countries
Here we can see the top 5 countries (with more than 1000 asylum seekers) that saw the biggest rise in asylum seekers at their borders between 2010 and 2011. To explore this data, hover over the table and select 'open widget in Silk explorer'.
When we explore the data a bit further, we can see the reason why Malta has the biggest growth, it had only 140 people requesting asylum in 2010. What happened?
In 2011, Malta was the country that had the most asylum seekers per thousand inhabitants.