Abims application

Published

August 28, 2025

The Abims (Aggregated Base of International Migrants Stocks) database includes the data sources mentioned below. Depending on the sources, the data will be downloaded from the mentioned sites or extracted from a dedicated package or API.

From any source, we will only download the lowest level (country). Several intermediate levels ate available, byt these level can be in certain cases specific (dans leur découpage), aussi nous avons décidé de ne pas les prendre en compte, et de reconstruire des unités agrégées dont la définition sera la même pour toutes les sources.

United Nations (UN)

  • Years 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2020, 2024

These databases can be accessed in two ways :

The databases which are described below can be downloaded from UN website adress.

Datafiles are available in Excel format (.xlsx)

The column labelled “to.Type” indicates the type of data used in deriving the estimates presented for destination countries.  

The codes used are:

  • B, which indicates that estimates were derived from data on the foreign-born population;
  • C, which indicates that estimates were derived from data on foreign citizens;
  • R, which indicates that the number of refugees or persons in refugee-like situations, asylum seekers or Venezuelans displaced abroad as reported by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or, where appropriate, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) were added to the estimates;
  • I, which indicates that there were no data on international migrants for the country or area concerned and that the estimates presented were imputed.

(Source : UN note in data sheets)

The untools package allows you to download UN migration data via an API. This package does not appear on the CRAN, a unified resource center around R, but can be downloaded directly via the following command devtools::install_gitlab(“dante-sttr/untools”, dependencies=TRUE)/

This package has not been maintained for 3 years. The data is available for the period 1990-2019, from fwo revisions, 2017 and 2019. Functions allow easy access to UNHCR data.

World Bank (WB)

3 different sources are available :

Information on site specifies that thid global matrice of bilateral migrant stocks is spanning over the period 1960-2000, disaggregated by gender and based primarily on the foreign-born concept.
Last updated on 06/28/2011

This base, which excludes refugees, is described in this article.

An online application is available to download a selection on datas.

This database is available from World Development Report 2023, mentionned at the bottom of the page as a zip file to download, and is an extension of the previous source, including years 1960,1970,1980,1990,2000,2010,2020.  

It includes an observation line by (country of origin, country of destination, year, sex).

File downloaded on August 07, 2024

The knomad website in NOT available since 2024, but Knomad global bilateral migrations matrices have been downloaded before, from years 2010, 2013, 2017, 2021

Eurostat (EU)

  • Years 1998 to 2023

The databases can be accessed in two ways

So, the tables which will be used in this application would be :

  • The table migr_pop3ctb has to be downloaded from eurostat server, for number of persons by country of birth. Data are available for years 1998 to 2023. We will select in the program only aggregated datas for all ages and all sexes. Datas will be stored in a dataframe called Eurostat_1.

  • The table migr_pop1ctz has to be downloaded from eurostat server, for number of persons by citizenship. Data are available for years 1998 to 2023. We will select in the program only aggregated datas for all ages and all sexes. Datas will be stored in a dataframe called Eurostat_2.

  • These two dataframes will be harmonized in country codes, and then merged in one sole dataframe Eurostat.

OECD (OECD)

Number of people are available both from nationality or country of birth.

The database can be accessed in three ways :

  • From website The data explorer tool, which allows to extract custom data from the reference databases in .csv or .xlsx formats. The OECD Data Explorer is an interactive web-based platform to explore, visualize, and download data from the OECD databases. You can search datasets with keywords like “international migration database” which gives access to stocks of foreign population” by citizenship or country or birth populations (two differents entries).

  • From an OECD package, which permits to extracts data through an API. One has to complete name of datasets and elements to extract, from code furnished in “Developer API” tab, in data explorer tool mentioned above.
    Important : The standard version of the package does NOT take in consideration 2024 updates. You have to download it from the github website and not from CRAN website.

  • From a rsdmx package, in using informations from data explorer tool, in “API developer” tab.

Datas have been extracted on december 2024, from website data explorer tool.

Process :

  • Use data explorer tool
  • Select indicators, citizenships or countries from origin, and countries of destination (reference area)
  • Switch on the tab “API for developer”
  • Copy the code which stands on “Data query” part
  • Enter the code in the dataset and filter variables

We choose in this documentation a program to detail importation from OECD package.

Documentation about use of API is available here.

this database is available here, for 34 destination countries and more than 200 countries of origin, for six reference years 2000/01, 2005/06, 2010/11, 2015/16 and 2020/21 (provisional).

Datas from 2015 have not to be used, because not available both for detailed origin and destination countries.

Datas from 2020 have not to be used, because furnished on provisional datas.

This database is an extension of the “Database on Immigrants in OECD Countries” (DIOC 2010), as it includes non-OECD receiving countries as well. The methodological note provides detailed information on the coverage, sources and classifications of the variables in DIOC-E 2010.