engleski

Croatia: Migration in the Space of Former Yugoslavia and in the Region

The 20th century has been called a century of refugees by demographers and its very 1980� s a decade of the greatest migrations. Changes in the East and South-East of Europe caused a wave of population movement which surpassed migration during and after World War II by its intensity. At the same time, in the early 1990� s, in contrast to previous decades of the post World War II period, political rather than economic antecedents, appeared to be more important in activating international migration. This article examines migration in and from the territory of the Republic of Croatia as in the time when it was a component of the former Yugoslavia so from its gaining independence till nowadays. The first part comprises migration in the territory of the former Yugoslavia (after World War II till the 1990� s) as a factor of changing the ethnic structure of the Republic of Yugoslavia. Since it was a question of a multinational state whose political concept was directed towards creating a new Yugoslav nation by means of neutralizing its national components, the article points at the changes of the national structure as the result of migration caused by economically conditioned spatial redistribution of population as well as by politically motivated movements and the change of relation towards ethnic commitment (or the conscience of ethnic affiliation) respectively. The second part deals with population movement in the independent Croatia (and migration abroad) faced with, besides permanent economic migration, refugees and expellees as a consequence of dramatic disintegration of nationally heterogeneous Yugoslavia (accompanied by war destructions and ethnic collision provoked by growing nationalism), ethnic migration that can be called a regrouping of diaspora as well as with social exile from the areas burdened with over-population and poverty and caused by political forces. The author concludes that Croatia, as well as many other states in the world, is affected by greater and greater mobility and mixture of people of different ethnic, religious-cultural and racial origin causing the reasons for changing the place of residence to be less and less important, while the need of newcomers to live as full citizens in a new community should already at present be adjusted to such reality.

population; ethnic structure; Croatia; migration; refugees; expellees; ethnic cleansing; diaspora; territory; changes

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