engleski

Contemporary Migration Trends in Croatia and Demographic (Spatial) Stability

Substitute migration is a form of spatial mobility that primarily seeks to solve the challenges of labor shortages in economic systems. The main pattern of such migrations takes place according to the principle of greater or lesser development, with greater or lesser intensity and with more or less pronounced consequences in emigration and immigration areas. Demographically aged, and soon depopulated, the European area is the main immigration destination in the world, where 87 million international migrants (primarily economic migrants) currently reside. The need for labor force of a certain profile in developed countries is a consequence of long-term unfavorable demographic processes in their domicile populations. On the other hand, medium-developed and underdeveloped European countries have been for decades the main sources of labor necessary for the functioning of large economies, and at the same time, due to emigration, they are faced with the emptying of space, the disappearance of the population and the reduction of the potential of demographic renewal, as is the case with Croatia. Contemporary trends in Croatia's external migration point to stronger emigration again, which was slowed down by the COVID-19 pandemic and accelerated by the recent economic crisis caused by unstable geopolitical circumstances in Eastern Europe. The questionability of Croatia's demographic stability is indirectly announced by data of 201, 000 people who left Croatia and a total of 148, 000 people who moved to Croatia from 2017 to 2021 (DZS, 2022), but also by the data of the 2021 Census, which confirmed the level of demographic threat in local (regional) areas. At the same time, the dominant demographic processes in Croatia, for example, depopulation, the extinction of smaller settlements, the spatial continuity of the emptying of Croatia, emigration of Croats, immigration of foreigners, spatial immigration selectivity etc., will potentially (and in the long term) cause changes in the homogeneity and structure of the population at the national level but also in lower administrative units. Maintaining spatial stability in the conditions of demographic decadence in Croatia is one of the main strategic challenges, especially in areas that are continuously losing their largest spatial resource (population), in formally existing administrative-administrative units without population and/or in areas with potentially significant changes in structural and identity features.

emigration, supstitution, national security, Croatia, population

nije evidentirano