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CITIES SUNK THE ISLANDSChanges in Small Island Communities

Gatheredbeneatha cloudcloser to the skybetweendeathand travelno difference.

The sheep sleepbehind thatwhich is comingor what already was.

From the inner sideof the islandfrom itsbottomthe night is returning.

I hear how the wavesseparated by the seadrag behind thema salty darkness.

Adrijana Škunca: “Island”

It is impossible for scientists from various disciplines to agree upon a common definition of islands and islandness, and it is equally difficult to find a generally accepted way of defining the division of islands in regard to their size. The subjects of this study were five small island communi-ties on five islands in the Šibenik archipelago: Prvić, Zlarin, Krapanj, Kaprije and Žirje, which the authors examined as small Croatian islands. Analysing elements from various definitions of islands (Rubić, 1952; ESIN, 2007; Zimmerman, 1997; Lajić & Mišetić, 2006), the authors conclude that none of the mentioned categorisations of islands by size is an actual indicator of the specific way of life of island populations, since all of them disregard some aspects which to a significant degree determine the daily dynamics of communities on all levels, regardless of their size/smallness. Thus, besides the size of an island or the magnitude of its population, especially important is its distance from the mainland, the number of ship lines, the presence (or non-presence) of certain economic subjects on the island, the presence (or non-presence) of education institutions for children of school and pre-school age, the level of organisation of health care and social security, the quality of social interaction (islanders-newcomers), the intensity of cultural events and the level of satisfac-tion of the inhabitants with every individual element of daily life or, simply said, with everything that encompasses the multidimensional concept of the quality of life of individual communities.

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Due to all the mentioned geographic, economic, sociological and psychological parameters, and in the hope of avoiding the flaws of whichever typology, the five selected Šibenik islands were exam-ined as small Croatian islands, and the results of the conducted research confirmed that it is only correct to view the population of each of them as a small island community.

Therefore, it was the goal of this study – by using a socio-geographic approach in analysing the various dimensions of islandness, to gain an insight into the present way of life and the basic changes that occurred in the last fifty years in the selected island communities on the Šibenik is-lands. In a particular way, by their size (surface area) and number of island settlements, by their unequal distance from the mainland, i.e. from the mainland centre to which they gravitate – the city of Šibenik, and by the small dimensions of their populations, these islands represent typical small island communities in Croatia. Likewise, being aware of the fact that the theme of this study calls for a multi-discourse approach, including also an artistic focus, the authors supplemented their scientific analysis with the verses and/or prose of some Croatian writers, whose works have been characterised by the poetics of islandness. Such references appear especially in the parts of the book that deal with the themes of island atmospheres, traditions, the mutual closeness of islanders, migration, loneliness, isolation…

Along with an analysis of the available literature, the use of secondary data sources, population censuses and a comparison with previous research results, the multidimensionality of the concept of the way of life of small island communities was tested through a survey, for the purposes of conducting field research. A survey questionnaire was constructed consisting of about one hundred questions, divided into the following thematic groups: I) satisfaction with life, II) health and sup-port, III) security, IVa) the feeling of belonging/community cohesion, IVb) social networks (the feeling of isolation, trust), V) environment, VI) public transportation, VII) socio-demographic status and housing, VIII) style of life – work, IX) style of life – leisure time, and X) migration. The questions were formulated as closed-ended (with offered answers and/or opinion scales) and as open-ended. Open-ended questions were posed in order “to hear” the voice of the islanders, there-fore to collect as well their concrete thoughts on individual segments of life, i.e. to use also elements of so-called free discussions for the purposes of analysing the results. Quotes and thoughts given by the respondents make up a significant part of the study.

At the time when the research was planned and conducted, the last available data on the number, age and gender of the inhabitants of the Šibenik islands was from the 2001 census. The respondents were selected by combining the methods of intentional and non-proportional quota samples. The research sample included a total of 249 islanders on five islands, which made up 20.2% of the registered permanent population on the examined Šibenik islands in 2001.

Writing on the typology of island migrations, some authors have proceeded from the traits of migrants participating in the movements as well as from the specificities/the types of migra-tion (Royle, 2001; King, 2009; Podgorelec, 2010; Klempić Bogadi & Podgorelec, 2011). Due to the specific positions of Croatian islands in the Adriatic vis-à-vis the mainland, their histories or the socio-political systems of the countries to which they belonged and the islands’ levels of economic development, customs and traditional cultures, it is impossible to simply apply a single existing typology. In order to analyse, as precisely as possible, the results gathered from the questionnaire

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survey, based on existing typologies (Royle, 2001; King, 2009), the authors of this study constructed a typology that included groups of residents/inhabitants according to their migration experiences. The first group consisted of island-born non-migrants and in the sample from the Šibenik islands only a fourth of the respondents in the survey never personally participated in migrations, yet they were always in contact with migrants – emigrants/out-migrants or immigrants/in-migrants. Within the next group, which included out-migrants, the authors differentiated out-migrant returnees – who after having spent periods of their lives outside the islands at various time points in their life cycles returned to their native island, from commuter out-migrants. The research study en-compassed 127 islander respondents, who returned to live on the island after having spent a longer period of their lives outside of it. In this as well as in previous studies (Babić, Lajić & Podgorelec, 2004), a relatively large number of respondent out-migrant returnees was made up of pensioners, whom the authors placed into the category returnee retirement migration. Returnee migration to the Šibenik islands was most intense in periods when islanders who had departed during the intense period of out-migration in the 1960’s and 1970’s reached retirement age.

Daily and weekly commuters, in both directions, are also present on the islands – i.e. persons that regularly during days or weeks travel from the island to the mainland to go to school or to work in Šibenik, Vodice, Brodarica or in other nearby places on the coast, as well as residents of the coast that due to their jobs regularly travel on work-days to one of the islands. The group of lifestyle migrants is made up of island residents born in other parts of Croatia, in neighbouring countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia and Serbia) and also in West European countries, who during a certain part of the year live on the islands. Research has shown that on the Šibenik islands this group does not consist only of pensioners, but also of work-active persons. On the Šibenik islands these people are mainly in-migrants/immigrants who along with a house on one of the islands have maintained their homes in their countries of origin and in the framework of yearly seasons circulate between the two homes. One of the recognisable groups of islander migrants is made up of marriage migrants. In the total sample, twenty respondents stated that they had mi-grated temporarily or permanently to an island for the sake of their partners. As expected, most were women (two thirds), who due to marriages with islanders came to live on an island, or who migrated to an island when their spouses returned to it after entering into pension. And finally, labour migrants, although relatively few in number, are present in the lives of island communities: they are in-migrants who moved to the islands from other parts of the country because of work, and have lived on an island for longer than a year. Since the Šibenik islands are small, with an un-developed economy and few work places, this group of in-migrants is numerically insignificant. On the larger Croatian islands, with more settlements, intra-island migration is also present. On the Šibenik islands, due to their smallness and the presence of only one settlement on most of them, with the exception of Prvić, intra-island migration between settlements does not exist. Yet one form of intra-island migration does exist, in the sense that individual island settlements include hamlets farther into the interior of the islands and the inhabitants of these hamlets are gradually abandon-ing them and moving to settlements on the coast.

The ties between Šibenik and the islands that are administratively linked to this city (with the exception of Prvić), which are the research topic of this study, have changed during history.

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Although the study describes various periods in more detail, for the purposes of this summary it is interesting to recall the connection that was established in the mid-19th century, first of all by extending the city’s administration to the islands, and then also by way of a certain commodity-monetary exchange between the rural island communities and the city. However, the Šibenik is-lands functioned for centuries as independent and self-sufficient organisms, relying simply on local resources, whereas today they are practically in all aspects of daily life totally dependent on the mainland – in the organisation of transport, the securing of water and electricity, the procurement of food and medicine, the education of children and young people, the employment of the work-active population, health, institutional and other care, etc.

Decades of unfavourable socio-economic opportunities on the small Šibenik islands have had a significant effect on their demographical development, marked by many decades of depopulation which fortified their position as a peripheral and problem-filled area. Thus, for example, in the pe-riod 1948–2011, the Šibenik islands lost as much as 79.2% of their population, which shows a truly extreme level in the depopulation process, caused primarily by out-migration, and later by a decline in the birth-rate. Intense out-migration of the population in the 1960’s and the 1970’s was directly mainly towards coastal/mainland centres that were going through swift industrialisation – first of all to Šibenik, and to a lesser degree to Zagreb, to other parts of Croatia and to foreign countries. Along with an inadequate economic policy towards the island area, poor transportation links be-tween the islands and the mainland, which dissimulated the commuting of their residents, and also a housing policy that assigned flats to islanders in cities on the mainland (in this case most often in Šibenik), made the islands lose residents, which resulted in negative natural demographic trends.

In 1961, at the start of the migration exodus, about twice as many young people (27.7%) lived on the Šibenik islands as elderly residents (14.3%). Twenty years afterwards, in 1981 – at the end of the period of most pronounced post-WWII emigration, the age picture on the islands had to-tally changed. At present on the Šibenik islands covered in this research study there are about five and half times more inhabitants in the age group of 65 and older than children under 14 years of age. The remaining younger work-active (working-age) population, due to a lack of work places on their islands and the impossibility of employment, is forced to continue to migrate elsewhere in search of jobs. The result of the mentioned processes is an ageing of the population, reflected in all the aspects of life in small island communities.

Geographic distance from the mainland has showed itself as being very significant in the de-mographic development of the Adriatic islands, and from this aspect, demographic vigour declines with distance. Yet in the case of the examined Šibenik islands it had been shown that geographic distance did not have a major effect on the level of depopulation, since depopulation equally ef-fected the islands close to the mainland (Krapanj, Prvić and Zlarin) and those more distant (Kaprije and Žirje). It would be expected that those nearer the mainland, and thus with a presumed lower level of isolation, would along with more favourable demographic indicators and processes also have economic structures of higher quality and thus likewise possibilities for better development. The research conducted on the five Šibenik islands confirmed that there were no substantial dif-ferences in the level of depopulation, or either in the economic structures and social aspects of community life on the examined islands.

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According to the 2011 census, there were 1,149 residents on the Šibenik islands, which was the lowest recorded number from the time when the first modern population censuses were con-ducted. The actual situation is even more unfavourable, since the last three censuses on the islands recorded as permanent residents a portion of the visitors to the islands, who reside on them oc-casionally, or for part of the year (owners of vacation homes).

And thus, most of the population of the Šibenik islands is today made up of elderly persons, mainly pensioners, who spent their work-active years on the mainland – and who, after enter-ing into pension, decided to live on their island. Among them, most are out-migrant returnee islanders. The phenomenon of returnee retirement migration was reinforced furthermore by the difficult economic situation in the country, the high costs of living and low pension levels, so that departure from a city and return to an island was also a type of strategy for economically increas-ing the standard of living of island out-migrants after entering into pension. Namely, the Šibenik islands are rural areas, in which all the inhabitants, apart from the houses in which they dwell, have some arable plots, so that they can carry out gardening and other agricultural activities and in this manner secure a natural income for their households. Pensioners on small islands feel a certain economic security to a certain degree, since they have a permanent source of income in the form of a pension, while along with it they partake in various types of agriculture, among which olive growing has become prevalent during the last decade. By working in their gardens and fields, they economically improve their material situation, and many of them, despite having relatively humble incomes, continue to financially help (with money and agricultural products) their children, who live mostly in nearby mainland cities. Thus, after about 150 years, it seems that the circle has closed in regard to the particular commodity-monetary economic relationship between the islands and the city – this time through the exchange between members of individual families, a part of whom (the parents) live on the islands, and the other part (the children and grandchildren) live in cities on the mainland.

It is difficult to say whether an island economy is at all present today on the Šibenik islands, since most of the population is not work-active, and the largest part of the active-age populations is in fact unemployed – and thus most of the population’s income is attained through pensions, acquired mainly after work on the mainland. The only exceptions would be two summer months, when tourist and catering activities come to life. Yet here we have to note that tourism on the Šibenik islands is relatively poorly developed. It is marked by pronounced seasonality, an inad-equate and insufficient accommodation structure, a lack of contents and of high-quality personnel – and, as such, it is mainly a supplementary/secondary source of income for island households.

Today tourist development is most successful on islands that are predominantly oriented to-wards selective forms of tourism, which are compatible with the natural and socio-economic fea-tures of island life, and as such contribute to the optimal use of the tourist specificities of such islands throughout the year. This practically always implies ecological forms of tourism, which can be fully coordinated with differential systems of environmental protection. Even though tourism introduces changes to small island communities, and so to the Šibenik islands as well, through a strong pressure on communal infrastructures and on the traditional way of life and culture of the community, it likewise enables incomes for service providers and by way of the right type of

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development should become a generator for creating new jobs, both for the islanders and for a seasonal work force, which practically includes also new islanders (in-migrants). In the economic development plans for the small Šibenik islands, tourism has not been perceived as an important factor, neither for economic progress nor for demographic stability.

The specific limitation of transport connections – the form and the frequency of ship links between the islands and the mainland, has had an effect on all aspects of daily life – social and economic: on the development of individual economic sectors, on the possibility of employment outside the islands, on permanent residence on the islands, on the level and extent of health care services and on the quality of cultural and recreational offers. Islands close to the mainland, ow-ing to decades of relatively poor-quality transport connections with Šibenik, did not make use of the possibility of daily commuting of the islanders to work in the city. Due to inadequate housing policies and poor ship links, the opportunity was missed to develop both the city and the islands in its immediate vicinity. Here we have in mind, for instance, the development of Zlarin as a city island, which would have functioned as an integral city quarter, in which quality-housing would have been possible, whereas Šibenik would have satisfied the functions of work, education and cultural-entertainment needs in the lives of the islanders. It turned out that daily or week commut-ing was only the first step in the permanent relocation of islanders to settlement on the mainland (Šibenik), in which the commuters worked, so that today one may conclude that daily travel of the labour force from the Šibenik islands has become practically an individual phenomenon.

A research study on the conditions making individual islands attractive for economic invest-ment, conducted in various island units of the European Union (ESPON, 2010: 66-68), produced results that highlighted five key factors: 1) the frequency of scheduled trips, 2) economic incentives (these can vary from subsidization of the initial development to the subsidization of the operating costs), 3) regularity of water supply, 4) development vision of local authorities (needed to recog-nise the uniqueness and the deficiencies of individual islands and create a concrete plan for future development), and 5) the regularity of energy supply. The five examined Šibenik islands, to differ-ent extents, meet some of these conditions for initiating economic activities. Transportation links are relatively good in the case of islands near the mainland, especially with Krapanj, slightly less with Zlarin and Prvić, yet they are complete unsatisfactory with Kaprije i Žirje. The possibilities of receiving economic incentives for starting activities on the islands (for example, incentives for the development of certain agricultural activities) do not differ much from island to island, in regard to their characteristics. Regularity in water supply is unsatisfactory, especially on the more distant islands. Local authorities do not have a worked-out strategy and vision for the development of the islands, based on the comparative advantages of each of them individually. There are also problems with the regularity of supplying energy on all the examined islands.

Despite similarities in demographic traits and in conditions for social and economic develop-ment, the basic differences between the populations of the Šibenik islands derive from the diverse migration experiences of individuals. The changes that individuals, in view of their migration ex-periences, introduce into island communities, are the result of their having lived in diverse socio-cultural-economic conditions, in various milieux – these involve differences between an urban society and a rural community, various levels of communal and cultural infrastructures, diverse

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possibilities offered by particular types of society (differences between islands and the mainland) in regard to the level of development of social networks, social capital, emotional ties, modes of hous-ing, etc. Owing to a long migration history, and in more recent times also to modern technologies, the island population, despite spatial limitations and a specific isolation, has already for decades been exposed to various influences from outside the islands, which gradually have been (and still are) changing its way of life.

Due to awareness of their small size and fragility, and a strongly expressed desire for demo-graphic survival, island communities are becoming more open to outsiders – first of all to in-migrants, and then to tourists, in whom they see a hope for demographic and economic survival, and even for revitalisation. The notion of a community and awareness of its importance becomes stronger in moments when the community senses any level of intense endangerment. A conflict with what is new, something other, different, is always a conflict between what is modern and what is local and mainly based on the traditional. Resistance to changes, visible in resistance to certain projects that have not been made through agreements, but have been imposed from out-side, expresses strong community solidarity in regard to problems that threaten island identity, as they are experienced by the islanders themselves. In this sense, a very graphic example is the trash incinerator on Zlarin, which absolutely all respondents consider a failed investment, although that investment was directed towards resolving one of the major infrastructure problems of all Croatian islands – waste disposal, and it was imagined as a small clean-industrial plant, which would also open up several work places on the islands.

Research concerning twenty five different criteria in regard to the attractiveness of islands as chosen places of residence (ESPON, 2010: 63-65), highlighted five that were most important: 1) the quality of health care system (adequate health infrastructure, equipment and sufficient quali-fied personnel), 2) trip frequency, 3) regularity of water supply, 4) job opportunities, and 5) the quality of life (short everyday distances, low noise, clean air). If we apply these criteria in regard to residence attractiveness to the five examined Šibenik islands, it becomes clear that, except in the sense of what defines the concept of quality of living, for the most part they do not satisfy any of the other criteria. Namely, the quality of health care on the islands is relatively poor (there is no permanent medical service on any of the islands). Transportation links, especially with the more distant islands Kaprije and Žirje, do not satisfy the needs of people today. Better quality water sup-ply exists only on the islands closer to the mainland. And the possibilities of employment of the island populations are minimal on all five islands. From this one may conclude that today the small Šibenik islands, despite the advantages of a well-preserved environment and of a more peaceful way of life, do not provide conditions which would make them attractive to potential in-migrants.

The availability of modern technologies on the islands opens up the possibility of changes in the lifestyle of these communities. They become transnational socio-cultural systems, cultural com-munities linked in a new way, which change together with shifts in the directions and the types of migration of the islanders, as well as with the arrival of tourists and the (more) permanent settle-ment of non-islanders and/or outsiders. It should be added that modernisation also brings about certain negative changes in the mentality and in the way of conceiving the community, which are reflected in a reduction of solidarity among its members, in more difficult attainable readiness for

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joint actions and work for the common good, and in an increasingly more expressed materialistic view of the world.

However, despite social changes, certain characteristics of islandness, especially the feeling of belonging to a community and the closeness of its members, are still strongly present in all the examined communities on the small Šibenik islands. The island is still a fixed point in the lives of its inhabitants, and also among those that live outside the island, since they maintain a strong sense of belonging to a relatively homogeneous and intimate island community, in which there is a strong sense of cohesion. Although changes in the community gradually alter also the opinions, both of older and younger (to a great extent out-migrated) islanders in regard to care providers and forms of help for (aged) parents on the islands, research in Croatian and other rural areas in the world that are characterised by strong migration confirms that immediate family members continue to be the basic providers of informal care to older family members. The entry of new technologies into island communities, the increase in computer literacy and in the use of various forms of communi-cation, along with an increase in the education level of both children (migrants) and (aged) parents, will also change intergenerational relations within dispersed families. For islanders, the family still provides the quality of living of the individual in most cases, both of younger and older family members. A relatively strong feeling of responsibility that has been maintained within islander families and communities as a whole, but also the presence of an awareness that communities need to open up to non-islanders/in-migrants, offer hope for the demographic survival of small islands.

Given their very unfavourable age structure and indicators of natural demographic trends, as well as the absence of a clear strategy for possible revitalisation, there is a high likelihood that small island communities will continue to die out in the next decades. An optimal economic appraisal of the resources of each island, individually, imposes itself as the only option for sustainable demo-graphic development. Among the possibilities, emphasis has been given to the further development of tourism, as well as to traditional agriculture, especially at a time when home-grown foods (or-ganic cultivation) and the Mediterranean diet have become popular. The main comparative advan-tages regarding the possible economic development of small Croatian islands are, precisely due to their previous relative economic neglect, a considerable degree of preservation of natural resources (land and sea), traditional architecture, as well as the value of cultural heritages and customs, which the islanders should present in a modern and interesting way.

There is no doubt that today there is not a sufficient labour force on the small Šibenik islands, and that the market is also not large enough, which, taken together, prevents the realization of profits from investments by small and medium private entrepreneurs into island projects. And so, in this case, the role of the state is of crucial importance. The state must invest into economic sectors, infrastructure and activities without which life on the islands would completely fade out, regardless of whether or not it ultimately receives back some direct economic advantages, or profits. Therefore, it is necessary for the state to provide employment for the islanders (and for new island-ers) so as to keep them on the islands, return them there, or attract them to the islands, reviving economic sectors that could become the basis also for preserving the prosperity of communities, by stimulating various forms of cooperation with joint private incentives through which common interests could be realised.

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And just as the authors of this study used a thought expressed by one female respondent for the title of this book, they conclude their study (and this summary) with the words of another respondent, a returnee pensioner (61 years of age): “On the islands only tourism should be devel-oped and tourist-related sectors, a processing industry tied to the sea, modern fishing, all tied to the fishing tradition, serving yachts, consuming fish, promoting small farming economies, with apartments and full services… With this we could reduce loans. Each county should have its own projects – also for the case of the elderly and the disabled, but without the help of the state this won’t go. They [= the counties] have stepmother relations towards the islands. The islands are still a ballast.”