Half of All Bosnians Live Outside Bosnia

There are at least two million people living abroad who originate from Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to data from the countries in which they live and from Sarajevo's diplomatic missions abroad.

According to the data, published in a report on migration trends by Bosnia's Security Ministry, Bosnian citizens mostly emigrate to Germany, followed by Austria, Croatia and Serbia.

Bosnia and Herzegovina does not have a precise record of people who have left the country, the only statistical data comes from the Agency for Identification Documents, Registers and Data Exchange, in its records of people who have deregistered their place of residence due to emigration.

This means that the number of expatriate Bosnians might be even higher.

"A large number of people who left Bosnia and Herzegovina did not have to be deregistered from their earlier place of residence, so we can say that the diaspora of Bosnia and Herzegovina is more than two million people," demographer Aleksandar Cavic told BIRN.

According to the agency's data, 4,034 people deregistered their place of residence in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2016, of whom number 1,196 moved to Germany, 895 to Austria, 888 to Croatia, 487 to Serbia, 421 to Slovenia, 63 to Montenegro, 38 to Norway, 36 to Holland and 10 to other countries.

Emigrants often send home money to help families and friends in the country, and the Bosnian Central Bank estimates that last year they transferred 2.4 billion Bosnian marks (around 1.2 billion euro) in remittances from abroad, which together with foreign pensions which are paid in Bosnia and Herzegovina amounted to 3.6 billion marks or 1.8 billion euros.

According to data from the World Bank, the number of people from Bosnia and...

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