The diaspora, in motion
The most honest chart of the Seychellois diaspora has a hole in it. The UN's 2024 data counts about 22,191 Seychelles-born people abroad, but 80% of that total is filed under Mozambique, a near-certain statistical artifact, while the United Kingdom, Canada and France, the real hubs, are recorded as zero. Set the phantom aside and the counted diaspora is about 4,536. This observatory lets you move through the data yourself, year by year, with the artifact shown and then removed, so you can see both the official number and the honest one.
- The UN DESA 2024 revision counts 22,191 Seychelles-born abroad in 2024, up from 21,722 in 2020 [UN DESA]
- 17,655 of that total, about 80%, is attributed to Mozambique, a figure the data itself shows cannot be real [UN DESA]
- Women are about 54.8% of the counted diaspora [UN DESA]
- The UK, Canada and France are recorded as zero in the UN series; destination censuses are used for those hubs [ONS]
Source: UN DESA International Migrant Stock 2024, extracted from the source workbooks · open dataset (CC BY 4.0) · the full reconciliation
The Mozambique problem, in three checks
We do not hide the anomaly, we interrogate it. Three facts from the data itself show the Mozambique figure cannot describe real people:
of the entire resident population of Seychelles would have to be living in Mozambique for the figure to be real.
of every immigrant in Mozambique, from anywhere on earth, would have to be Seychellois.
Seychellois the UN records in the UK, Canada and France, the three places the diaspora actually gathers.
So we lead with the counted diaspora excluding Mozambique, about 4,536, and use destination-country censuses for the real hubs. The point of an honest observatory is to show you the artifact, not to quietly delete it.
UN figures against national censuses
Where a destination runs its own census, we compare it to the UN number and say which we trust. This is the reconciliation behind the map.
| Destination | UN 2024 | Census | What we use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Australia | 2,623 | 2,623 (2021) | The UN figure and Australia's own census agree closely, about 2,600 Seychelles-born, concentrated in Perth and Melbourne. This is the diaspora's best-counted hub. |
| Italy | 777 | — | UN DESA records about 780 Seychelles-born in Italy, a long-standing and plausible community. An ISTAT cross-check is still to be added. |
| South Africa | 460 | — | UN DESA records about 460, likely an undercount given the historical ties. Stats SA cross-check pending. |
| United Kingdom | 0 | — | The UN bilateral series records ZERO Seychelles-born in the UK, which is clearly wrong: the ONS 2021 census enumerates a Seychelles-born population (the TS012 detailed country-of-birth table), and the UK is widely described as the diaspora's largest hub. We are extracting the exact ONS figure; until then we flag the UN zero as a gap, not a count. |
| Canada | 0 | — | The UN bilateral series records ZERO for Canada. Statistics Canada's 2021 census counts a Seychelles-born population (Montréal is the main cluster, about 740 at the 2016 census). We use the census, not the UN zero. |
| France | 0 | — | France does not appear in the UN Seychelles-origin series at all. Given the shared French heritage and language a community exists, but we have no sourced figure yet, so we say so. |
A dash means no census figure is extracted yet; where the UN records zero but a census exists, the census leads. We never invent a number to fill a gap.
- United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. International Migrant Stock 2024 (POP/DB/MIG/Stock/Rev.2024). 2024. original · archived accessed 2026-07-15The current revision, covering 1990–2024. We extracted the Seychelles-origin totals and the full origin-by-destination matrix directly from the official workbooks. This is the primary source for the Diaspora Atlas.
- Office for National Statistics (UK). Census 2021, TS012 Country of birth (detailed), England and Wales. 2021. original · archived accessed 2026-07-15The authoritative count of Seychelles-born residents in England and Wales, which the UN bilateral series omits entirely.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2016 Census of Population and Housing — country of birth: Seychelles. 2016. original · archived accessed 2026-07-14About 2,500 Seychelles-born residents in Australia, concentrated in Perth and Melbourne.
- Statistics Canada. 2016 Census — immigrant population by place of birth: Seychelles. 2016. original · archived accessed 2026-07-14About 740 Seychelles-born in the Montréal census metropolitan area, Canada's largest cluster.
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This page is a stable reference. Its URL will not change, its content is reviewed on a stated cycle, and our original text is licensed CC BY 4.0, so you may quote and reuse it with attribution. Every source above carries a live link and an archived copy.
Seychelles Abroad. (2026, July 16). The Diaspora Observatory. https://seychellesabroad.org/atlas/observatory/“The Diaspora Observatory.” Seychelles Abroad, 16 July 2026, seychellesabroad.org/atlas/observatory/.Seychelles Abroad. “The Diaspora Observatory.” Last reviewed July 16, 2026. https://seychellesabroad.org/atlas/observatory/.