Serb diaspora

The Serb diaspora (Serbian: Српска дијаспора, romanized: Srpska dijaspora)^[a] consists of ethnic Serbs and their descendants living outside Serbia and its neighboring countries. Recent estimates indicate that about 1.6 million ethnic Serbs and their descendants live abroad, predominantly in Europe and, to a much lesser extent, overseas (primarily in North America and Oceania).

Serbs in the countries bordering Serbia, commonly termed "Serbs in the Region" (Срби у Региону, Srbi u Regionu), are not regarded as part of the Serb diaspora, since they constitute autochthonous communities that have the legal status of recognized ethnic minorities or, in case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the constituent peoples.

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