Pew Research Centre backs down on UK Jewish migration figures

One of the most prestigious global research institutes, the New York-based Pew Research Centre, has agreed to revise figures in its latest report about the religious composition of the world’s migrants.

The move comes after Jewish News questioned the Pew statistics relating to the UK, part of an overall global survey which suggests that Jews are more likely than any other religious grouping to be migrants to another country

In the Pew survey, released in Washington DC last week, the organisation’s researchers said that the United Kingdom was the third-most common destination for Jewish migrants (120,000), closely followed by Australia and Russia. Pew says that “as of 2020, just over 21,000 of such Jewish migrants to the UK came from Romania, closely followed by almost 21,000 Polish Jews. Almost 14,000 Jewish migrants to the UK came from Israel, with 7,406 from America and 5,041 from Hungary”.

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Additionally, Pew said that “the UK – which in 2020 was the third-most common destination – had been ninth on the list in 1990. Jewish migration to the UK rose substantially during this period, with the stock of Jewish migrants living in the UK tripling from 40,000 to 120,000. Germany experienced similar growth, from 30,000 to 90,000, and rose to sixth on the list from 10th”.

But, even anecdotally, it was clear that there were not 120,000 Jews who had not been born in Britain, living in the UK in 2020. Pew’s figures indicating that there were just over 40,000 Romanian and Polish Jews living and working in the UK, were profoundly at odds with what is known by British Jewish community planners. Recent UK figures show that in fact around 80 per cent of Jews living in Britain today were born here.

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Dr Daniel Staetsky, senior research fellow at the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) and director of the European Jewish Demography Unit, said: “The last Census of England and Wales (2021) registered the presence of 271,000 Jews by religion in the UK, and 287,000 Jews by religion and ethnicity.

“The Scottish Census (2022) identified the presence of about 6,000 Jews and there are about 400 Jews in Northern Ireland (2021 Census of Northern Ireland). In total, the official estimate takes us to about 294,000 Jews”. But, Dr Staetsky said, a more probable real number was around 317,000.

He said that “the proportion of foreign-born Jews in the 2021 Census of England and Wales is about 20 per cent. That number is unaffected by the undercount. Applying 20 per cent to the revised estimate of the total number of Jews suggests that the number of foreign-born Jews in the UK is around 63,000. This is quite far from 120,000 that the Pew report presents”.

Stephanie Kramer, the lead researcher on the Pew Report, said that  they had arrived at their figures by pairing United Nations numbers  on world migrants — which are not broken down by religion — with “local data”. This would have included Census figures, she said.

But late last week Ms Kramer said that Pew would “revise the estimate of Jewish migrants to the UK and explain why. We will revisit our Jewish estimates for other top origins and destinations that we haven’t already adjusted substantially in consultation with local experts. After we re-examine those country-level estimates and make any necessary adjustments, we’ll move on to evaluating UK estimates for other religious groups across time.

“Once we get through this process, we’ll zoom out to see if any adjustments we end up making to the UK or Jewish numbers have significant implications for any other aspect of the report and proceed from there”.

The Pew Centre was founded in 2004 and its reports are frequently cited by demographers around the world. This latest report uses data from the United Nations and 270 global censuses and surveys as of 2020, the latest year for which global figures are available. It includes findings on Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and religiously unaffiliated migrants around the globe.

The research shows that though Jews make up 0.2 per cent of the world’s population, we account for one per cent of all international migrants. “In percentage terms, this means Jews are more likely than people in the world’s other major religious groups to live outside their country of birth. Two in ten Jews have moved across national borders as of 2020, compared with smaller shares of Christians (six per cent), Muslims (four per cent ), Buddhists (two per cent), religiously unaffiliated people (two per cent) and Hindus (one per cent)”.

The report says that Israel, whose Law of Return grants Jews the right to move to Israel and receive immediate citizenship — is far and away the top destination for Jewish migrants. As of 2020, about 1.5 million Jews born elsewhere reside in Israel, making up just over half of all Jewish migrants worldwide. Top sources of Jewish migrants in Israel include former Soviet republics such as Ukraine (170,000) and Russia (150,000). Morocco is also high on the list (160,000).

The United States has the second-largest population of Jewish migrants (400,000). Just over a quarter of Jewish immigrants to the US were born in Israel, and sizeable populations have come from Russia (50,000) and Canada (50,000).

Commentators say that the figures on Israel, which has a highly professional Central Bureau of Statistics, and America, which is on Pew’s doorstep, are much more likely to be accurate.