Original scientific paper
The Recent Development of Croatia's Population – Regular and Irregular Population Trends
Ivan Lajić
Abstract
The recent development of Croatia’s population is burdened by many phenomena, due to which we can define it as irregular. Aggression against the newly-independent Croatian state, as well as the wars in its neighbourhood, brought about mechanical population movements that to a great degree enter into the category of forced migrations. The war death rate in the early 1990s and the strong refugee and expellee flows caused the strongest depopulation in recent times. Depopulation was present not only in war-effected areas – its further consequences were felt throughout Croatia. The mechanical, rather than the biological component determined this regressive development. The paper identifies the key modalities in migration flows in Croatia, which show that it is at the same time both an emigration and an immigration country. Wars in former Yugoslavia, which were to a high degree characterized by inter-ethnic conflicts, resulted in migration flows of people to their ethnic core areas. Thus, Croatia has received a strong immigration current made up of Croats from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, whereas emigration from Croatia to the latter countries mostly involved rural Serbs. Besides these migration trends, members of the ethnically Croatian (majority) population and also other groups from Croatia, have migrated to Western Europe, which was a continuation of traditional migration trends. Among these migrants there is a large contingent which could be denoted as part of the “brain drain”. The census conducted in 2001 applied a different methodology than earlier censuses. The problem of different census methodologies is especially pertinent in a country which has a large number of refugees and economic migrants that cannot be classified into the category of emigrants. Thus the 2001 Census registered that Croatia has 4,437,460 inhabitants, or 7.25% less than in 1991.
Keywords
population development; regular population trends; irregular population trends; expellees; refugees; spatial development; Croatia
Hrčak ID:
7263
URI
Publication date:
28.9.2004.
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