The migration concerning Vojvodina and its historical preliminaries

Abstract

The study aims to outline the migration that affected the Vojvodina in the last two decades and to examine the historical roots of contemporary migration. It overviews both the domestic and the international migration waves, with special emphasis on the migration from Vojvodina to Hungary. Our objectives are to present the main migration waves and their background in political, economic and ethnic terms.

The migratory processes concerning Vojvodina should be divided according to different periods. These migration periods strongly depend on the (geo)political circumstances of the period in question, since the most significant (forced) migration waves were triggered by wars and by the change of political systems and state borders. During peaceful periods, mostly economic inequalities and regional disparities influence voluntary migration. Thus most of the migrants have followed the undeveloped–developed (or periphery–centre) direction, which has hardly changed in the last century. This phenomenon fits the global migration system as well, since the direction of migration is generally from East to West (e.g. guest workers) or from South to North (e.g. refugees of the Yugoslav wars to Vojvodina; or Vojvodina Hungarians to Hungary).

Beside the political and economic factors, ethnicity plays the most important role in the migration examined in this study. According to our perception, every migratory process in which ethnicity represents symbolic, cultural or social capital is considered to be ethnic migration (e.g. the forced migrations generated by the changes of borders, the flight of Serb refugees to Serbia and the resettlement of Vojvodina Hungarians in Hungary). However, we would emphasize that ethnic push factors (e.g. ethnic tensions, discrimination) as well as economic inequalities and development gaps also contribute to ethnic migration.