Geographical studies and environment protection research
Volume X | Issue 2
The Role of Borders in the Demographic Trends of Hungary
Abstract: During the period of communism, international borders were closed in Hungary. Borderland regions were in a disadvantageous situation and they strove with serious out-migration. The border regions of the counties (NUTS-3 level) face a similar situation. This paper tries to describe the population change trends of the Hungarian settlements connecting with the situation of borderlands. The settlements have been divided into three groups according to their location/function (inner border, county-border, international border) and it was inferred that the population change trends of the two border regions are similar.
Volume X | Issue 2
The Evolution and Territorial Distribution of Rural Population in Romania at the Beginning of the 21st Century
Abstract: As a territorial and socio-economic formation, the village represents the concrete expression of territorial permanence and continuity, directly relating to the genetic and dynamic factors of settlement phases and humanisation of the geographical space. Under the present conditions, a number of manifest phenomena are triggered by the decrease in birth-rates, internal and external migration, all of which affect the process of population ageing throughout the country. In the 20 years elapsed since the downfall of the communist regime in 1989, the population of Romania dropped by nearly 1,713,000 inhabitants, 1,195,000 of them in the countryside alone. The demographic decline continued over the 2000-2009 period as well, at higher rates in the rural (-49 ‰) than in the urban (-37‰) areas. Solving the numerous issues connected with the rural population component calls for strategic, time-stable optimal approaches.
Volume X | Issue 2
Deindustrialization and Structural Changes in Commuting Flows in Serbia
Abstract: The aim of the paper is to point to the mutual linkage between the changes in the extent and directions of the commuting flows and contemporary changes in the economic structure of Serbia. Even though the increase in the number of commuters in total and commuters employed in the industrial sector has been evident on the national level, on the local level the research results indicate a considerable decrease in the number of industrial commuters in the case of large industrial centres (‘transition losers’). Unprepared for rapid transformation, the industrial centres faced economic (mono-functional economic structure, collapse of large systems, undeveloped entrepreneurship, slow privatisation process), structural (high unemployment), social and demographic problems. Consequently, there have been changes in the intensity and structure of the migration flows.
Volume X | Issue 2
Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija in the Second Half of the 19th Century According to an Ethnic Map of a Part of Old Serbia
Abstract: This article interprets the results of the author’s cartographic work on the Ethnic map of a part of Old Serbia, 1:300,000. This map pertains to a part of the historical Old Serbia, especially Kosovo and Metohija, with the addition of the Kuršumlija nahiya. It was made on the basis of three volumes of travel notes made by Miloš S. Milojević, who travelled through this area towards the end of the 1860’s and in the early 1870’s. The map presents, in an accessible manner, through the make-up and distribution of the population in the settlements within the region, the ethnic situation at the time, relying on the ethnic-national and religious-confessional criteria; that is to say, it presents the demographic-statistical structure of the mutual relations between Serbs and Albanians immediately before the wars between Serbia and Turkey fought in 1876 and 1877/78, when Serbs were the majority and Albanians the minority population on the territory of the Kosovo and Metohija region.