The Maltese diaspora

In 2021, Malta’s foreign minister cited an estimate of about 420,000 Maltese and Gozitans in the global diaspora—roughly the population of the islands at that time. But this broad diaspora includes descendants of emigrants; it is not a count of citizens currently living abroad. UN migrant-stock data for 2024 show about 43,900 people born in Malta living abroad. Malta’s resident population at the end of 2024 was 574,250 people of all citizenships. Thus the claim is plausible only as an older estimate of the wider diaspora, not as a comparison of citizens.