Demographics of Ecuador - Migration Trends

Migration Trends

In recent decades, there has been a high rate of emigration due to the economic crisis that seriously affected the economy of the country in the 1990s, over 400,000 Ecuadorans left for Spain and Italy, and around 100,000 for the United Kingdom while several hundred thousand Ecuadorans live in the US, (450,000 by some estimates) mostly in the city of Northeast corridor. Many other Ecuadorans have emigrated across Latin America, thousands have gone to Japan and to Australia. One famous American of Ecuadoran descent is pop music vocalist Christina Aguilera.

In Ecuador there are about 100,000 American and 30,000 European Union expatriates. They move to Ecuador for business opportunities and as cheaper place for retirement.

As a result of the political conflict in Colombia and of the criminal gangs that had appeared in the areas of power vacuum a constant flow of refugees and asylum seekers had moved into Ecuadoran territory. Over the last decade a minimum of 45 000 persons are now residents in Ecuador and the government and international organizations are assisting them. According to the UNHCR 2009 report as many as 167,189 refugees and asylum seekers are temporary residents in Ecuador.

Following the migratory trend to Europe many of the jobs that those that left held in the country had been taken over by Peruvian economic migrants. Those jobs are mostly in agriculture and unskilled labor. There are no official statistics but some press reports estimate their number into the tens of thousands.

There is a diverse community of Middle Eastern Ecuadorans, numbering in the tens of thousands, mostly from Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian descent; prominent in commerce and industry, and concentrated in the coastal cities of Guayaquil, Quevedo and Machala. They are well assimilated into the local culture and are referred commonly as "turcos" since the early migrants of these communities arrived with passports issued by the Ottoman Empire in the beginning of the century. See also: Lebanese people in Ecuador.

Ecuador is also home to communities of Basques, Italians, Germans, Portuguese, French, Britons and Greek-Ecuadorans. Ecuadoran Jews, who number around 450 are mostly of German or Italian descent. There are 225,000 English speakers and 112,000 German speakers in Ecuador of which the great majority reside in Quito, mainly all descendants of immigrants who arrived in the late 19th century and of retaired emigrees that returned to their terroir. Most of the descendants of European immigrants strive for the preservation of their heritage. Therefore some groups even have their own schools (e.g. German School Guayaquil and German School Quito), Liceé La Condamine (French Heritage), Alberto Einstein (Jewish Heritage) and The British School of Quito (Anglo-British), cultural and social organizations, churches and country clubs. Their contribution for the social, political and economical development of the country is immense, specially in relation to their percentage in the total population. Most of the families of European heritage belong to the Ecuadoran upper class and had married into the wealtiest families of the country.

There is also a small Asian-Ecuadoran (see Asian Latino) community estimated in a range from 2,500 to 25,000, mainly consists of those having any amount of Chinese Yunan and Han descent, and possibly 10,000 being Japanese whose ancestors arrived as miners, farm hands and fishermen in the late 19th century. Guayaquil has an East Asian community, mostly Chinese including Taiwanese and Koreans.