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Cyprus Emigration
Emigration of Cypriots abroad has often been on a large
enough
scale to affect population growth. As a demographic
phenomenon, it
has been viewed as an extension of rural to urban
movement. At
times when a future in the towns was unpromising for those
intent
on escaping rural poverty, there was the additional safety
value of
emigration. Cypriots frequently availed themselves of this
opportunity instead of living in crowded slums in their
country's
towns, and their relatively small numbers meant that
recipient
countries could easily absorb them. Although there was
emigration
as early as the 1930s, there is no available data before
1955.
The periods of greatest emigration were 1955-59, the
1960s, and
1974-79, times of political instability and socioeconomic
insecurity when future prospects appeared bleak and
unpromising.
Between 1955 and 1959, the period of anticolonial
struggle, 29,000
Cypriots, 5 percent of the population, left the island. In
the
1960s, there were periods of economic recession and
intercommunal
strife, and net emigration has been estimated at about
50,000, or
8.5 percent of the island's 1970 population. Most of these
emigrants were young males from rural areas and usually
unemployed.
Some five percent were factory workers and only 5 percent
were
university graduates. Britain headed the list of
destinations,
taking more than 75 percent of the emigrants in 1953-73;
another 8
to 10 percent went to Australia, and about 5 percent to
North
America.
During the early 1970s, economic development, social
progress,
and relative political stability contributed to a
slackening of
emigration. At the same time, there was immigration, so
that the
net immigration was 3,200 in 1970-73. This trend ended
with the
1974 invasion. During the 1974-79 period, 51,500 persons
left as
emigrants, and another 15,000 became temporary workers
abroad. The
new wave of emigrants had Australia as the most common
destination
(35 percent), followed by North America, Greece, and
Britain. Many
professionals and technical workers emigrated, and for the
first
time more women than men left. By the early 1980s, the
government
had rebuilt the economy, and the 30 percent unemployment
rate of
1974 was replaced by a labor shortage. As a result, only
about
2,000 Cypriots emigrated during the years 1980-86, while
2,850
returned to the island.
Although emigration slowed to a trickle during the
1980s, so
many Cypriots had left the island in preceding decades
that in the
late 1980s an estimated 300,000 Cypriots (a number
equivalent to 60
percent of the population of the Republic of Cyprus)
resided in
seven foreign countries.
Data as of January 1991
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