Foreign population in MaltaYearPopulation% total2005 12,1123.0%2011 20,2894.9%2012 23,3655.5%2021 115,44922.2%2022 137,37625.3%2023 158,36828.1%2024 173,70030.9%
Immigration to Malta has increased significantly over the past decade. In 2011, immigration contributed to 4.9% of the total population of the Maltese islands in 2011, i.e. 20,289 persons of non-Maltese citizenship, of whom 643 were born in Malta. In 2011, most of migrants in Malta were EU citizens (12,215 or 60.2 per cent), predominantly from the United Kingdom (6,652 persons).
By the beginning of 2021, figures released by Malta's National Statistics Office showed that 20% of Maltese residents, or 103,718 people were foreigners. According to Malta's national employment agency, 70,402 of these non Maltese nationals were employed. Workers from EU countries made up 44% of the employed foreigners resident in Malta, while non-EU nationals represented 56% of Malta's foreign workforce. As of September 2021, foreign workers made up 27.9% of Malta's total workforce. The top employer for these foreign workers is the gambling and betting sector, which in Malta is made up of 58.6% of non-Maltese nationals.
Demographically, non-Maltese residents in Malta are predominantly males (52.5%) and younger than average (40.6 years of average age).
As of the end of 2020, the most popular location for foreigners to live in Malta was St Paul's Bay, where non-Maltese nationals made up 52% of the population. Sliema also has a substantial foreign population, with 43% of residents holding foreign passports as of the end of 2020.
History of immigration to Malta
The current Maltese people, characterised by the use of the Maltese language and by Roman Catholicism, is the descendant - through much mixing and hybridation via different waves of immigration - of the Siculo-Arabic colonists who repopulated the Maltese islands in the beginning of the second millennium after a two-century lapse of depopulation that followed the Arab conquest by the Aghlabids in AD 870. A genetic study by Capelli et al. indicates that Malta was barely inhabited at the turn of the tenth century and was likely to have been repopulated by settlers from Sicily and Calabria who spoke Siculo-Arabic, the progenitor of modern Maltese. This is consistent with linguistic finding of no further sub-stratas beyond Arabic in the Maltese language, a very rare occurrence which may only be explained by a drastic lapse. Previous inhabitants of the islands - Phoenicians, Romans, Byzantines - did not leave any traces, as all place names were lost and replaced. Modern historiography thus contest the traditional "Christian continuity thesis", positing instead a period of total depopulation of Malta at the end of the late antiquity.Yosanne Vella, Wettinger has been vindicated, but why do historians still disagree?, Malta Today, 7 July 2015
The Maltese islands remained largely Muslim-inhabited long after the end of Arab rule. The Arab administration was also kept in place and Muslims were allowed to practise their religion freely until the 13th century. As a result of this favourable environment, Muslims continued to demographically and economically dominate Malta for at least another 150 years after the Christian conquest.
Between 1194 and 1530, the Kingdom of Sicily ruled the Maltese islands and a process of full latinisation started in Malta. The conquest of the Normans would lead to the gradual Romanization and Latinization of the Siculo-Arabic Muslim population of Malta, and the subsequent firm establishment of Roman Catholicism.Kenneth M. Setton, "The Byzantine Background to the Italian Renaissance" in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 100:1 (Feb. 24, 1956), pp. 1–76. Until 1224, however, there remained a strong Muslim segment of society. By the end of the 15th century all Maltese Muslims would be forced to convert to Christianity and had to find ways to disguise their previous identities by Latinizing or adopting new surnames.
After the Norman conquest, the population of the Maltese islands kept growing mainly through immigration from the north (Sicily and Italy), with the exile to Malta of the entire male population of the town of Celano (Italy) in 1223 (though most of them returned home few years later), the stationing of a Norman (Swabian) and Sicilian garrison on Malta in 1240, the arrival of several thousands Aragonese soldiers in 1283 to 1425, and the settlement in Malta of noble families from Sicily and the Crown of Aragon between 1372 and 1450. As a consequence of this, Capelli et al. found in 2005 that "the contemporary males of Malta most likely originated from Southern Italy, including Sicily and up to Calabria."C. Capelli, N. Redhead, N. Novelletto, L. Terrenato, P. Malaspina, Z. Poulli, G. Lefranc, A. Megarbane, V. Delague, V. Romano, F. Cali, V.F. Pascali, M. Fellous, A.E. Felice, and D.B. Goldstein; "Population Structure in the Mediterranean Basin: A Y Chromosome Perspective," Annals of Human Genetics, 69, 1–20, 2005.
Malta was then ruled by the Order of Saint John as a vassal state of the Kingdom of Sicily from 1530 to 1798. For the next 275 years, these famous "Knights of Malta" made the island their domain and made the Italian language official. The members of the Order came from the various noble families of Europe, thus providing Malta with a steady influx of affluent immigrants. Together with the Knights, in 1530, 400 (or up to several thousands according to other sources) Rhodian sailors, soldiers and slaves moved to Malta, possibly bringing along the few Byzantine words in Maltese language. Further immigration of several thousand Greek-rite Christians from Sicily in 1551 and again in 1566 may also have helped.
The 19th and first half of the 20th century were for Malta marked by membership in the British Empire. Its excellent harbours became a prized asset for the British, especially after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. The island became a military and naval fortress, the headquarters of the British Mediterranean fleet, with some 22,000 British servicemen posted in Malta from 1807 to 1979,Joseph M. Brincat, "Language and Demography in Malta: The Social Foundations of the Symbiosis between Semitic and Romance in Standard Maltese," in Malta: A Case Study in International Cross-Currents. Proceedings of the First International Colloquium on the history of the Central Mediterranean held at the University of Malta, 13–17 December 1989. Ed: S. Fiorini and V. Mallia-Milanes (Malta University Publications, Malta Historical Society, and Foundation for International Studies, University of Malta) at 91-110. Last visited 5 August 2007. as well as other British and Irish that settled in Malta over the decades. The islands also saw a steady influx of labourers from the other parts of the Empire, such as Indian textile traders from Sindh (see: Indians in Malta). In the same period, the learned class of Maltese society often identified with the Italians, particularly from the late 19th century Risorgimento period up to the Second World War (see: Italian irredentism in Malta). Up to 891 Italian exiles also sought refuge in Malta in the late 19th century.
At the same time, overpopulation and poverty pushed the Maltese to emigrate well into the 1960s and 70s, particularly to other British colonies such as Australia, South Africa, Canada and Egypt, but also to Great Britain, Gibraltar, Corfu and the United States.
The late 20th century saw the independence of Malta. Since this period, retired British servicemen and their families constitute the greatest part of foreign residents in Malta. Since 1959, Malta's British governor started to pursue a plan of economic development based on promoting tourism and tax competition, particularly offering very low tax rates on pensions, royalties and dividends to attract retired British settlers (referred to as 'sixpenny settlers') from other former colonies of the Empire. Malta saw a large influx of Britons from Rhodesia after 1967.
Closer links to Qaddafi's Libya since the 1970s saw a growth of Libyans in Malta, while around 800 Ugandan Indians were resettled in Malta after they had been expelled by Idi Amin in 1972. In the early 1990s Malta was a first stop for refugees from Iraq and Kuwait during the first Gulf War, later often resettled to North America. The arrival of African asylum seekers grew from 2001 onwards, particularly of citizens of Somalia, Nigeria, and Eritrea.
Membership of the European Union in 2004 led to the growth of a community of Maltese in Belgium, while skilled workers from other EU (Italy, Bulgaria, Germany, Sweden) and non-EU countries (Serbia, Pakistan) moved to Malta to contribute to the growing industries, from construction to hotel services, banking and ICT. Malta's EU accession also prompted a renewed public discussion about Maltese identity and its role of bridge between Europe and the Mediterranean. As noted by Schembri in 2004, the Maltese tended to stress their belonging to Europe as a way of distinguishing themselves from North Africans, and the public debate on immigration has reflected entrenched xenophobic stereotypes. The public attitudes of the Maltese towards both North Africans and Sub-Saharan Africans - including refugees and asylum seekers - have worsened over time, paralleled by the government's strict detention policies for irregular migrants.
Among the main immigrant communities in Malta: The Indian community in Malta (l-Indjani) was composed of nearly 7,000 persons in 2023, including 300 persons (45 families) stemming from the town of Hyderabad, Sindh (in today's Pakistan). They are Maltese citizens and reside in Malta since British times, originally as textile traders. The Arab community counted around 3,000 persons in 2007, mostly originally from Libya and today Maltese citizens. The presence of the Libyans in Malta, with the only mosque of the island (Mariam Al-Batool Mosque in Paola, Malta), amounts to the good relations between the Qaddafi and Mintoff governments in the 1970s and 1980s. The Albanians in Malta are a small community, originally arriving as refugees in 1999, when UNHCR resettled 110 persons from Kosovo to Malta. Nigerians in Malta are one of the most visible communities of recent immigration, despite their relatively low number. Several of them are football players in the island's over 50 football clubs. (see Ndubisi Chukunyere and his daughter Destiny)
Legislation Immigration to Malta is mainly regulated by the Immigration Act and by the Asylum Act. The Immigration Act, passed in 1970, was reformed in the run-up to Malta's EU accession, in 2000 and 2002, in order to align it with the EU acquis. Maltese law maintains a rigid protectionist approach to labour migration. A Work Permit Scheme permits immigrants to reside and work in the country for a certain period of time, if their skills are absent locally or in short supply. Permits are issued by the Department for Citizenship and Expatriate Affairs. Applications are examined by a cross-governmental board in a process taking three to four months. Permits are usually yearly and can be renovated; applications for renewal should be submitted five months in advance. Foreign investors holding substantial shares in the manufacturing or financial services can apply for indefinite-time permits of stay.
Work permits holders in Malta were 2,928 in 2003, of which 813 women. Most of them were issued to British citizens (387), then to "Yugoslavs"(306), Chinese (232), Indians (166), Bulgarians (146), Italians (143), Libyans (141).Katia Amore, Malta, in Anna Triandafyllidou, Immigration: A Sourcebook, 2007