Serbian Australians[a] (Serbian: Cрпски Аустралијанци/Srpski Australijanci), are Australians of ethnic Serb ancestry. In the 2021 census there were 94,997 people in Australia who identified as having Serb ancestry, making it a significant group with the global Serb diaspora.[1][2][3]
History
During the time of Federation a very small number of Serbs inhabited Australia. Despite a lack of accurate data it is assumed that ethnic Serbs deriving from Lika, Dalmatia and Montenegro did reside in largely mining communities throughout the Commonwealth, though exact numbers are unsubstantiated. The first significant, albeit small wave of Serbian migrants, comprising mostly former POWs, and displaced persons fleeing war and genocide began arriving in Australia as post-war immigrants.[4][5] This initial wave also included members of the royalist Chetnik movement fleeing political persecution by the Communist regime of Josip Broz Tito.[6][7][8]
The easing of emigration restrictions by Yugoslavia generated a second, larger wave of predominantly economic migration throughout the 1960s and 1970s. An agreement between Australia and Yugoslavia facilitated the recruitment of largely unskilled and semi-skilled immigrants, from predominantly rural backgrounds to work in Australia's manufacturing and construction industries.[9] The developing political and economic issues in Yugoslavia during the 1980s, alongside its disintegration, ensuing wars, economic sanctions, and hyperinflation of the 1990s, resulted in the largest Serbian migration to Australia.[10][11][12]
In recent years, some Serbian Australians have joined and become members of the "Serbian Chetniks Australia" organisation.[13] This organisation promotes the concept of Chetnik forces fighting against the Nazi and Italian regimes during the second world war and as a result has participated in Anzac Day marches in Melbourne and Sydney. This is a highly controversial move due to the Nazi collaboration that Draža Mihailović participated in during the second world war and has attracted criticism from the large Croatian Australian and Bosnian Australian communities. [14]
Classification issue
For many years Serbian Australians were classified "Yugoslavs" as flawed Australian census data failed to recognise the diverse ethnic groups within the former Yugoslavia. Questions regarding ancestral heritage were not included in any Australian census until 1986.[15][16] From 1971- 1991 Yugoslavian nationals ranked 4th largest in Australia's post-war migrant intake. Census data has established that Serbs ranked 3rd within the Yugoslav immigrant pool, behind declared Croat and Macedonian ethnicities.[17]
Demographics
People with Serbian ancestry as a percentage of the population in Sydney by postal area (2011 census)
Serbian Australians comprise 0.36% of Australia's population, with 69.67% residing in the states of New South Wales and Victoria alone. Serbs reside mainly in state capitals and major metropolitan areas throughout Australia. The largest Serbian communities can be found predominantly in Melbourne's western and south-eastern suburbs, and in Sydney's south-eastern suburbs.[18][19][20][21]
The Australian Bureau of Statistics allows the provision of two ancestries in a multi-response question. In the 2016 census there were 73,901 people in Australia of Serbian descent, 0.31% of the total population. 67.06% of Serbian Australians declared full Serbian ancestry. Individuals identifying as Serbian in the first response comprised 11.84%, whilst 21.09% declared Serbian heritage in the second response.[22][21]
The community is commonly known in English as Serbian Australians, and scarcer as Serb Australians. In Serbian, the community is known as Australian Serbs (аустралијски Срби / australijski Srbi), and scarcer as Serbs in Australia (Срби у Аустралији / Srbi u Australiji).
^Stefanovic, D.S. (2002). "Serbs". In James Jupp (ed.). The Australian People: An Encyclopedia of the Nation, its People and their Origins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 678. ISBN978-0-521-80789-0.
^"Naš Andrej je lep ko lutka!" [Our Andrej Is Beautiful Like a Doll!]. Alo! (in Serbian). 31 December 2011. Archived from the original on 9 January 2012. Retrieved 31 December 2011.
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