Migration Flashcards
Age of migration
Not a new phenomenon
Pre-WW1 migration
Mainly for economic reasons, with initial move from Europe to Americas at expense of local population, who died due to disease
Massive exodus from Ireland in the 19th century, with he bulk moving to the USA
Change in migration after WW1
Most migration in Europe became forced (ethnic cleansing) - people were expelled from the Balkans, and forced exchanges with Ottomans
Armenian genocide
Set a precedent for forced migration
Hitler’s elimination conviction
Hitler wanted to get rid of Slavs: in 1942 he planned to kill 30-45 million by disease and starvation
From deep Darwinian conviction
Stalin forced migration
Imposed a social revolution - 1.5 million Poles moved from the Polish east
Millions have died in the harsh conditions of deportation
Germans after 1945
Germans expelled by allies - Stalin’s expulsions of Poles led to Poland’s expulsion of Germans
Promise vs. reality of forced migration
Meant to be ‘orderly and humane’; wasn’t
Kosovo situation
Serbians drove out around 1 million Kosovans, with Kosovan Albanians returning fire by ejecting Serbs
Forced migration in Central Europe
They constitute an essential part of their history, and in some countries are a major part of all recent migratory movements
Current view of forced migration
A destabilising factor rather than a solution
Escalation of forced migration
19th century - forced migrants in the thousands and tens of thousands
Balkan conflicts generated hundreds of thousands
WW1 generated millions
Apogee came during WW2 and its aftermath, where tens of millions uprooted
Reasons for forced migration
Political map of Europe repeatedly redrawn as Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian or Russian empires withdrew and nation-states emerged
Nationalism followed, leading to a tendency to eliminate the minorities
Totalitarian regimes made the scope of forced migrations far larger and more ruthless
Ottoman empire migration
Turkish reprisals for rebellions and mutual hostility between Muslims and Christians generated refugees
Up to 1912, Bulgaria received about 250,000 refugees, whilst Constantinople’s population doubled with Muslim refugees
Serbian WW1 migration
March of Serbs to Adriatic coast thought to have killed 200,000
Thousands of Serbs dispatched to camps in Bulgaria and Hungary and used as forced labourers
German advance WW1 migration
Advance of German armies in Russia led to mass evacuation (obligatory for Jews and factory/institution employees)
Up to 1916, over 3.15 million refugees registered in non-occupied Russia
Interwar exchange
Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece continued their transfer of minorities
Treaties of Neuilly (1919) and Ankara (1925) for voluntary exchange; actually all exerted pressure
Proudfoot WW2 calculation
60 million citizens were affected by the wartime migration in Europe
Over 20 million displaced in the aftermath of the war
WW2 fleeing from advancing Germans
300,000 fugitives from western and central Poland (2/3 Jews) reached territories that would soon be occupied by the Soviets)
Reason for WW2 forced migration
Need to eliminate alien ethnic groups and increase national cohesion in annexed territories
German resettlement in Poland began 1939, with 900k Poles and the majority of the 600k Jewish community uprooted
