engleski

Social changes, migration and ethnic structure: Case study of Petrinja (Croatia)

This paper deals with the change of the ethnic structure of Petrinja and its causes that seem to be paradigmatic for ethnically mixed areas in Croatia. Petrinja was chosen due to its bipolar ethnic structure in which the Croats and Serbs constitute the greater part of the population but also owing to the fact that radical changes in the proportion of these groups took place in the 1945-1998 period. As late as 1948 Croats constituted slightly more than four fifths of the city population. In the year 1991 there were 40.96% of Croats, 45.14% of Serbs and 13.9% of “other and unknown” in the city of Petrinja. Thus in the city of Petrinja in four decades, the Croats lost their status of explicit majority with a tendency of decreasing in percentage. The causes of these processes are to be found in the formation of new mobilisational channels (negative selection of personnel, “nomenclature” etc.) typical for the post-war communist regime. The power was based on the charisma of the local partisans and the members of the Communist Party in the political system with which (it seems) the local Serbs identified more than did the Croats. The scheme characterised by links between ideology and subethnic traditions (patriarchal modes, paternalism, ethnocentrism), family networks, the inclination of the undeveloped wider periphery (with Serbian majority) towards Petrinja resulted in selective migration and, consequently, in the changes in the ethnic structure. Dramatic changes in the ethnic structure took place in 1991 with the aggression against Croatia. The migration flows have not stabilised yet. Not until the next census (in 2001) the consequences on the ethnic structure of Petrinja left by the war and post-war happenings will be clearly shown.

social change ; migration ; ethnicity ; ethnic structure ; Croats ; Serbs ; Petrinja ; Croatia

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