Emigration zones in Serbia: 2011 census results

In the last few decades there have been changes in the nature of international migration trends and spatial mobility of population on the world level. This was influenced by significant changes on the political scene of Europe and the world, globalisation, international capital flows, technical-technological progress, the IT revolution and so forth. International migration trends are mainly analysed from the perspective of the recipient countries, while research from the perspective of the origin countries is much rarer, and especially those which include both aspects. At the same time, there is an evident lack of reliable information containing data on migration trends between countries of origin and destination, regional origin and demographic structures of migrants, which hinders a more detailed territorial analysis. Serbia does not have satisfactory statistics on international migration as well, even though it is a country with long emigration tradition. The census data on the Serbian nationals working or residing abroad, regardless of the relatively large census undercount, present the main sources of statistical information on the characteristics of Serbian emigration, and practically the only source of data on their regional origin and socio-demographic features. Regional differences in view of the share of nationals abroad are very pronounced in Serbia. They were established as early as 1971 the Census and confirmed by every following census. The 2002 Census results indicated there were three typical emigration zones. The aim of the paper is to determine whether there have been changes in the spatial distribution of the emigrants from the regional aspect of Serbia as an origin country, based on 2011 Census final results. The characteristics of the Serbian citizens abroad, according to age and sex, length of stay abroad, country of destination and ethnic composition, have also been analyzed in this paper. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 47006: Investigation of demographic phenomena in the function of public policies in Serbia]