Slovakia

In its modern history, Slovakia has been an emigration rather than an immigration country. Intensive emigration movements from the territory of the current Slovak Republic were particularly evident from the second half of the nineteenth century until the First World War, when more than 500,000 persons left for the United States of America and another 350,000 for other regions of the world (Divinský, 2004a). Emigration continued both during the interwar period and under communism. While mainly economic factors contributed to emigration until the Second World War, emigrants after 1948 were largely motivated by political reasons (persecution, political pressure, disagreement with communist ideology, impossibility of self-fulfilment and so on).