The Macedonian diaspora (Macedonian: Македонска дијаспора, Makedonska dijaspora) consists of ethnic Macedonian emigrants and their descendants in countries such as Australia, Italy, Germany, Canada, the United States and others. A 1964 estimate put the number of Macedonian emigrants at over 580,000.
The Macedonian diaspora is the consequence of either voluntary departure or forced migration over the past 100 years. It is claimed that there were six major waves of emigration. The Macedonian Slavic-speaking immigrants in the first half of 20th century were considered and identified as Bulgarians or as Macedonian Bulgarians.
1. The First wave occurred after the Failure of the Ilinden Uprising in 1903. Many people fled to other parts of Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria, Egypt, Russia, the USA and Canada.
2. The "Pečalba" tradition which was common across Macedonia. Many people settled in the host countries. The pečalbari emigrated from the 1880s to the 1920s, mainly to Greece. Large settlements occurred in Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Turkey and the United States.
3. The period from World War I to the Great Depression, when Macedonians fled Serbian rule and moved to Western Europe for industrial labor jobs, mainly in countries such as France, West Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, which will repeat again from the early 1950s to late 1970s.
4. Post World War II and the Greek Civil War thousands of Macedonians fled, were evacuated or emigrated. Thousands of people fled from Greece after the failure of the DSE, the National Liberation Front and the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) to win the Greek Civil War. An estimated 55,000 people were evacuated to Romania, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the rest of the Eastern Bloc.
5. During the 1960s Yugoslavia lifted restrictions on emigration. Hundreds of thousands of Macedonians emigrated. Internal Yugoslav migration was also very prevalent, by 1991 an estimated 80,000 Macedonians were living throughout Yugoslavia. Primary destinations were Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland and the USA.
6. After the Breakup of Yugoslavia thousands of Macedonians emigrated. Many went to Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the UK and North America.
1; This figure refers to country of birth only.
