More than 55 percent of Guyanese nationals have left the country for destinations abroad.įollowing Guyana’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1966, immigration to the country dropped, from approximately 13,500 in 1965 to 4,100 in 1990-a result of more restrictive border policies in the decolonization period and sustained economic hardship in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Though Guyana’s history as first a Dutch and later a British colony was marked by the importation of enslaved Africans and indentured servants from India, descendants of whom make up most of the Guyanese population today (29.2 percent and 39.8 percent respectively, according to the country’s most recent census figures), the post-independence period has seen extremely high emigration. This article examines the policies and conditions shaping migration in Guyana today and what the country’s anticipated economic changes given a huge oil windfall may mean for these trends moving forward.įrom Country of Emigration to One of Immigrant Destination? Simultaneously, given that 90 percent of the country’s population resides in coastal areas below sea level, environmental experts have raised alarm that the exploration of new, massive oil deposits could accelerate the impacts of climate change on Guyana’s infrastructure and agriculture, potentially leading to mass internal displacement. It remains to be seen, though, whether labor needs will prompt the development of more formal migration pathways and holistic immigrant integration programming, or whether it will contribute to the socioeconomic disparity dominant in oil-producing countries around the world.

Migrant labor and the return of some of the sizeable Guyanese diaspora-with about 550,000 nationals abroad, the country has one of the world’s highest emigration rates-could help sustain Guyana’s economic growth by filling demographic and skills shortages in the local population. The discovery of vast offshore crude oil deposits beginning in 2015 has made Guyana, which has a domestic population of approximately 800,000, the fastest-growing economy in the world, on track to replace Kuwait as the world’s largest oil producer per capita. Located in South America, though culturally and politically grouped with countries in the Caribbean, Guyana is increasingly becoming a migrant destination, both for neighboring Venezuelans fleeing their country’s ongoing socioeconomic and humanitarian crisis, and for skilled migrants granted free movement under the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Single Market and Economy agreement.

Guyanese on internet