structural:reformatting
Emigration

The option to choose between Surinamese or Dutch citizenship in the years leading up to Suriname's independence in 1975 led to a mass migration to the Netherlands. This migration continued in the period immediately after independence and during military rule in the 1980s and for largely economic reasons extended throughout the 1990s. The Surinamese community in the Netherlands numbered 350,300 as of 2013 (including children and grandchildren of Suriname migrants born in the Netherlands), compared to approximately 566,000 Surinamese in Suriname itself.

According to the International Organization for Migration, around 272,600 people from Suriname lived in other countries in the late 2010s, in particular in the Netherlands (c. 192,000), France (c. 25,000, most of them in French Guiana), the United States (c. 15,000), Guyana (c. 5,000), Aruba (c. 1,500), and Canada (c. 1,000).