Original scientific paper
SOCIAL CHANGES, MIGRATION AND ETHNIC STRUCTURE: CASE STUDY OF PETRINJA (CROATIA)
Jadranka ČAČIĆ-KUMPES
Ivo NEJAŠMIĆ
Abstract
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 the1945-
-1998 period. As late as 1948 Croats constituted slight-ly 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 Pe-trinja in four
decades, the Croats lost their status of explicit majo-rity with a
tendency of decreasing in percentage. The causes of these processes
are to be found in the formation of new mobili-sational
channels (negative selection of personnel, "nomen-clature" 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, ethnocen-trism), family networks,
the inclination of the undeveloped wider periphery (with
Serbian majority) towards Petrinja resulted in se-lective 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.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
20168
URI
Publication date:
30.4.2001.
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