Serbian Diaspora

Serbian Diaspora

There are currently more than 3.5 million Serbs in the diaspora throughout the world (not including states where they are constitutional or formerly constitutional peoples; such as Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Montenegro). The large Serbian diaspora is the consequence of either voluntary departure, coercion and/or forced migrations or expulsions that have occurred throughout history.

After the Middle Ages, due to the invasion and later wars of the Ottoman Empire in the Serbian territories (see Ottoman Serbia), Serbian populations overwhelmed the "Christian lands" under Habsburg (Austrian and Hungarian) administration. To the east (Czechoslovakia, Russia and Ukraine) from World War I, until the fall of Communism in 1990. To North America (United States and Canada), Australia, New Zealand due to economic migration. During wartime, particularly World War II and post-war political migration, predominantly into overseas countries (large waves of Serbians and other Yugoslavians into the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). Going abroad for temporary work as "guest workers" and "resident aliens" who stayed in their new homelands during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s (to Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom); however, some Serbians returned to Yugoslavia in the 1980s. Escaping from the uncertain situation (1991–1995) caused by the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the renewal of vicious ethnic conflicts and civil war, as well as by the disastrous economic crises, which largely affected the educated or skilled labor forces (i.e. "brain drain"), increasingly migrated to Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand.

The existence of the centuries-old Serbian populations in countries such as Austria, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Russia, Poland, Slovakia, Turkey and Ukraine, is the result of historical circumstances – the migrations to the North and the East, due to the Turkish, Austrian and Italian conquests of the Balkans and as a result of politics, especially when the Communist Party came into power, but even more when the communist state of Yugoslavia collapsed into inter-ethnic conflict, resulting in mass expulsions of people from certain regions as refugees of war. Although some members of the Serbian diaspora do not speak Serbian or practice religion, they are still traditionally regarded as Serbs or Serbians rather than Yugoslavs.