Page 217 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities
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Urban Opportunities
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Figure 7.2 Emigration from the Tomaj Curacy (1830–1959)
Notes Based on data from šak, žat, sa.
As previously noted, the primary direction and the most significant
long-termgeographicaldestinationofTomajemigrationwasTrieste,which
attracted over 58 percent of all accounted emigrants. The majority of them
settled in the city, while approximately 20 percent settled in the surround-
ing countryside within the Trieste municipality. By the 1880s, a real geo-
graphical specialization had characterized the phenomenon, with 80−90
percent of emigrants heading towards Trieste. Subsequently, the range of
destinations began to diversify in line with increasingly international mi-
gration trends. Even in the early twentieth century, however, half of the
emigrants from the villages of the Tomaj curacy were still bound for Tri-
este. Throughout the period under examination, except for the 1920s, the
‘Trieste trajectory’ remained the primary route leading Tomajans on their
migratory way.
With the general increase in labour mobility and migration within the
Habsburg Empire from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards,
Tomajans increasingly departed for other Austrian provinces. The main
destinations were Istria, Carniola, and Styria. From the end of the 1880s,
as was the trend elsewhere in Slovenia, they were also drawn to Ameri-
ca. The initial overseas emigrants set off to Brazil, which attracted numer-
ous families and individuals from the Karst area with subsidized transat-
lantic transport and appealing contracts for acquiring farmland within the
Brazilian colonization programmes (Kalc 1995). However, people’s interest
was more in securing good earnings than better land, leading the Tomajans
to shift their focus towards the industrial and mining centres in the usa.
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