Migration transition in Serbia: a realistic future or just a hypothetical model?

Vladimir Nikitovic, Institute of Social Sciences, Belgrade

From the demographic point of view, the future of the population of Serbia is relatively certain at least in the next three to four decades. Furthermore, the decreasing and ageing of the population are considered to be very certain processes in the much longer term. Although replacement fertility is an essential condition for long-term survival of any population, it is shown that an immigration impulse would be of vital importance for alleviation of the negative demographic trends in Serbia in the longer perspective. Such a migration transition (from net emigration to net immigration) would inevitably lead to increased socio-cultural diversity and require the development of integration strategies. Yet, if successful, policies to stimulate an increase in net migration provide an almost instant result. Apart from old immigration countries from Western Europe, this was the case with new immigration destinations located in Mediterranean and Central Europe, including some former socialist countries. In order to estimate the future trend of international migration balance of Serbia, the experiences of the latter countries were used. Two diverse migration patterns of the possible transition were formulated: "Polish" and "Czech" scenario. The population dynamics model employed for evaluating different migration scenarios was grounded on the probabilistic concept of projecting vital components. The main conclusion is that there is no demographic alternative to the migration transition in Serbia when it comes to sustainability of the social security systems in the coming decades, but the possibility that such a scenario could be realized is still not clear from today's perspective given the existing limitations of the socio-economic nature.