Egypt historically drew immigrants but now loses citizens to emigration.
Evidence
This is one of the factors which has led to an entirely new phenomenon in Egyptian life—emigration. For hundreds and indeed thousands of years Egypt has been a country of immigration not of emigration. The hospitable land and people of Egypt, the wealth of the Nile valley, have in ancient, medieval and modern times attracted immigrants from many other countries who have come to Egypt, settled there, and contributed to its growth and development. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1290
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: Reverses the common assumption that Egypt is and always was an emigration source; parallels the Lebanese/Egyptian diaspora histories in migration literature.
- SEED: An angle on how insecurity and loss of belonging reverses a millennial migration pattern — the reversal of a country’s demographic direction as a barometer of political failure.
Related
- Egypt reversed from an immigrant-receiving to an emigrant-sending country (similarity 0.91)
- Egypt’s own imperial past complicates the binary colonial narrative. (similarity 0.79)