In 10 years, more than 74,000 residents left Montenegro and the trend of emigration continued in 2022, when, according to the data of the Association of Statisticians and Demographers of Montenegro, more than 1,900 people emigrated. However, according to Gordana Radojević, a large number of people arrived in Montenegro, mainly due to forced migration, especially in the last two years, so it may happen that after the census in November we have 700,000 residents.
Gordana Radojević from the Association of Statisticians and Demographers said that 66,000 people have settled in Montenegro in the last 10 years, and these are mostly citizens of Russia, Ukraine and Turkey.
– It is mostly about forced migration and it can be expected that this population will leave to live here. If they open the door to our enumerators in the upcoming census in November, and declare that they want to continue living in Montenegro, we can reach the point where we have 700,000 residents, regardless of citizenship, origin, nationality. Considering that we have around 100,000 refugees at the moment, hypothetically this situation will change the total size, but also the structure of our population – explains Radojević.
She notes that the trend of emigration and the decline in the birth rate indicate that Montenegro is slowly entering the depopulation zone. The number of inhabitants, she says, increased slightly until 2018, but then we have a negative trend, which was especially pronounced during the pandemic in 2021.
– Several factors affect this trend, the economy is one of them, but it is not decisive, because even the largest countries in Europe, such as Germany, have a declining birth rate. The fact is that in our country this factor has a significant impact on the reduction of the population – said Radojević.
