The Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity is developing very interesting interactive visualizations to show migration patterns and other diversity related data.
They show global migration flows with innovative interactive visual techniques, which are dynamic – showing changes over time. It is also possible to compare two countries and analyze the gender breakdown. Visualizing data with these innovative visual perspectives provides impressive insights! Policy makes and politicians should look more often at the data, and so they will find the “diversification of diversity”. Data are provided by the World bank, United Nations and other global institutions.
You can experience their interactive software online http://stock.mmg.mpg.de/origin and http://flow.mmg.mpg.de/ and make interesting discoveries. For instance in Switzerland one of the biggest immigration groups are Portuguese. Also the balance between immigration and emigration to/from Switzerland is not unsurprising. In Italy the largest group of immigrants are from Morocco, followed by Albanians.
Yet I think a white background could improve readability.