Migrations in the Julian March after the Second World War

Abstract

The paper deals with migrations to and from the Julian March during the first decade after the Second World War. This was a complex, multi-level process, involving Italians as well as Croats and Slovenes. Soon after the capitulation of Italy in September 1943, almost all Italians left the Slovene Littoral (Primorska) where they had settled after 1918. Similarly, the vast majority of the Italian ethnic community emigrated from Istria, as well as many Slovenes and Croats. Communism was the main reason for the emigration of Slovenes from the territory before, and also after, its annexation to Slovenia in 1947. At the same time, Communism attracted many Italian workers to the area. The Slovenes and Croats who had been deported or mobilized under the Fascist regime, returned from other Italian provinces, and, from Yugoslavia, those who emigrated before the war. In the mid-Fifties, a substantial number of the inhabitants of the Trieste region emigrated overseas. Some thirty percent of these were Slovenes.