Original scientific paper
Immigrants from the European Socialist Countries in the USA and Canada: Socio-Demographical Aspects
Krystyna Slany
; Institute of Sociology of the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
Abstract
The author discusses the socio-demographic structure of immigration from East European socialist countries like Albania and Yugoslavia to the U.S.A. and Canada from 1941 till the middle of the eighties. A characteristic feature of these, including Albania and Yugoslavia, migrations, which are also called modern migrations, are changes in their directions, intensity, causes as well as the social structure of the immigrants. The analysis of this process distinguishes its five phases enclosed in five consecutive decades, i.e. 1941–1950; 1951–1960; 1961–1970; 1971–1980; the last phase which started in 1981 is not finished yet. The data presented show that in the period in question the immigrants from the European socialist countries constituted only 2.9% of the total number of immigrants to the U.S.A., while their proportion in the total number of immigrants to Canada was 6.6%. The proportion of immigrants from East Europe in the U.S.A. was ca. 2.5% of the total number of admissions in the years 1941–87, while in Canada – ca. 5.4%. In comparison with the decades 1961–70 and 1971–80 in the middle of the 80's the proportion of immigrants from the examined countries in the U.S.A. and Canada increased. It is worth noting that the proportion of Poles among the emigrants from the East European countries in the U.S.A. and Canada is comparatively the highest, suggesting that Poles are the most mobile of all East European nations, including Yugoslavs.
Keywords
immigrants; socio-demographic structure; socialist country; Europe; United States of America; Canada
Hrčak ID:
127670
URI
Publication date:
31.8.1990.
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