Migration

Mobility and migration abroad were Croatian responses to economic deprivation, conquest, and war. Within the last century alone, Croats suffered a long agricultural crisis, devastation of their vineyards by phylloxera, two world wars fought on their soil, a persistent inter-war depression, and a gruelling post-war reconstruction. Where several neighbouring nationalities often chose to remain at home, the Croats more than any other South Slavic people emigrated in search of a better life. As many as 1.5 million people left from 1890 to the present, or three-quarters of all emigrants from former Yugoslavia – all this from a population that counted only a quarter of the nearly 24 million Yugoslav citizens in 1991. Croats spread out across the globe, to Europe, Canada, the United States, South America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

The areas of heaviest emigration initially were the regions bordering on the Adriatic – Istria, Primorje, and Dalmatia – and those on the transportation axis between Rijeka and Zagreb, such as Žumberak and Karlovac. The inter- and post-war periods saw more diffuse migration, with greater representation from larger urban centres such as Zagreb and from towns and cities in Slavonia. Thus coastal and rural migrations prior to 1914 gave way to mixed, rural and small-town migration from the coastal and central regions between the wars and a more diffuse mix of small-town and large-city migrants, including many professionals and intellectuals, after 1945.

Estimates of total migration to Canada range from 65,000 to 100,000. It is impossible to give precise figures, because census statistics counted Croats first as Austrians, later as Yugoslavs, and only since 1971 as Croatians. As well, between 1919 and 1939 almost half of the total emigrants from Croatia – 87,926 of 195,931 worldwide, or in Canada’s case about one-quarter of 14,000 – eventually returned to Croatia. Official Canadian figures indicate about 110,000 immigrants from Yugoslavia in the period 1900–71. Even if one allows for up to 25,000 more over the following twenty years, the total is probably not more than 150,000 this century.

The bulk of the Yugoslav immigrants were of Croatian origin – or about 75,000 to 100,000. The 1991 census recorded 52,595 (41,550 single- and 11,045 multiple-response) Croats in Canada. Many of the 89,325 “Yugoslavs” declared in the 1991 census were also of Croatian origin. If at least half of these are Croats, the current number of Croats in Canada may be at least 90,000. Community estimates place the figure in the region of 150,000.