Review article

East-West Migration in Europe 1918-92

Heinz Fassmann ; Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria
Rainer Münz ; Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany

Abstract

The paper analyses available demographic data on international migration within and to Europe during the periods 1918-39 and 1945-92. The main focus is on the East-West dimension of this migration. In the inter-war period some 9.2 million people either left their countries as labour migrants or were displaced as a result of the peace treaties and the new boundaries of the emerging nation states. In the post-war period (1945-50) some 15.4 million people fled or were displaced within Europe. Most of them moved or were forced to move westwards: e.g. ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia, Silesia, East and West Prussia to East and West Germany, Karelians to Finland, Poles from the Ukraine and Belorussia to Poland, Ukrainians from Poland to the Ukraine, Italians from Istria and Dalmatia to Italy, etc. Between 1950 and 1992 another 14 million people migrated from a country in East-Central and Eastern Europe to the West. The main sending countries were the former GDR (37% of all East-West migrants of this period), former Yugoslavia (17% including recently displaced persons from Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia), Poland (14%) and the former Soviet Union (12%). More than two thirds of all European East-West migrants moved to (West) Germany (68%). Most East-West migrants belonged to an ethnic or religious minority (e.g. ethnic Germans, Jews, ethnic Turks, other Muslims, ethnic Greeks, Armenians, Pentecostals) with a nation state in the West or at least with a strong foothold or lobby in one of the western countries. In recent times the wars in Croatia and Bosnia as well as ethnic cleansing have led to the largest wave of refugees and displaced persons since 1945. More than 5 million citizens of former Yugoslavia are displaced. Of them only 700,000 managed to enter a western country. The paper argues that push and pull factors causing massive migration cannot only be contained by erecting new legislative barriers and deploying more armed guards against newcomers.

Keywords

international migration; Europe; East-West migration; ethnic migration; refugees

Hrčak ID:

126952

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/126952

Publication date:

31.3.1995.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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