Serb diaspora

Serbian Orthodox churches in diaspora (clockwise from top left): Saint Spyridon in Trieste, Italy; Saint Prince Lazar in Birmingham, United Kingdom; Saint Sava in Libertyville, United States; Saint Sava in Adelaide, Australia.

The emigration of ethnic Serbs in the modern age could be categorized into several waves.^[1] The first wave included emigrants from regions towards the Adriatic Sea and the Habsburg monarchy, in the 19th century, and notable individuals were Nikola Tesla, Mihajlo Pupin and Milutin Milanković.^[1] The second wave came in the aftermath of World War II in Yugoslavia, when tens of thousands prisoners-of-war did not return to Socialist Yugoslavia; liberalisation efforts of the Communist regime in the 1950s allowed for children of war emigrants to leave the country, with examples such as Charles Simic and Steve Tesich.^[1]

In the 1960s came the third, larger wave, of "Gastarbeiters" (guest-workers). The Yugoslav state encouraged its citizens of rural and city peripheries to work abroad temporarily, in order to earn money for a better life back home.^[1] By the early 1970s, more than a million Yugoslavs lived abroad, the majority in Germany.^[2] In the 1980s, youngsters of the middle- and high class emigrated.^[1]

The Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s saw emigration of recruit-aged, and the expulsion of ethnic Serb communities in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.^[1] Serbia and Montenegro suffered hyperinflation, international sanctions, economic collapse, and finally the NATO bombing of 1999. During that single decade an estimated 300,000 people, disproportionately young and educated, left Serbia.^[3][4] This period saw the first massive "brain drain" - doctors, engineers, and university professors who have never returned.

The descendants of the early economic migrants, the post-World War II war political exiles, the gastarbeiters, the 1990s war refugees, and the 21st-century brain-drain generation now form communities across every continent.

• Directorate for Cooperation with the Diaspora and Serbs in the Region