Migration Policies
Croatian migration policies were for a long time part of an encompassing policy, in Croatia partly so named diaspora policy. In Croatia, the concept of the diaspora encompasses a history of displacement from the home country (displacement of Croats in this reading was led by the Serbian dominated socialist-authoritarian regime), a collective myth about the home country including its territorial expansion, history and accomplishments, an idealization of the home country together with the obligation to preserve its heritage, an ambivalent attitude to all countries of destination for migrants as well as the belief in a return.[1] Out of this follows that the corresponding migration policies, on the one hand, promote the return of those Croatians living abroad together with their descendants and, on the other hand, set up a kind of minority policy to protect the rights of Croatians living abroad. Accordingly, these diaspora policies must be understood as an important means of ethnic-national strengthening and unification of Croatia after its founding in 1991. Although the diaspora objectives lost meaning, they have an after-effect in present migration policies: to date, the interest in current or potential non-Croatian immigration remains low.
Table 3: Emigration from and immigration to Croatia (2001-2011) Lizenz: cc by-nc-nd/3.0/de/ (bpb)Target Groups
Historically conditioned and connected with the outlined idea of diaspora, the Croatian migration policies addressed three more or less different groups. First to be named are those migrants (together with their descendants) who have left Croatia or former Yugoslavia for various reasons. Secondly, it addressed the Croatians who themselves were not forced to migrate but due to the historical development do not live in Croatian territory—most importantly this deals with Croatians living in Bosnia-Herzegovina and to a lesser extent those in Serbia. A third unspecific target group of Croatian migration policy is to be differentiated from both of these "diaspora groups", and that group comprises immigrants in general. This group is, however, both politically and quantitatively rather unimportant.
Table 4: Population of Croatia by population groups Lizenz: cc by-nc-nd/3.0/de/ (bpb)
