page_title: Demographic history of Kosovo
section_title: 1931 census
hierarchical_section_title: Demographic history of Kosovo / Yugoslav Interwar period / 1931 census
caption_attribution_description: English: Serbian colonization in Vardar Macedonia
context_section_description: According to the 1931 Kingdom of Yugoslavia population census, there were 552,064 inhabitants in today's Kosovo.
  By religion:
  Muslims: 379,981 (68.83%)
  Orthodox Serbs: 150,745 (27.31%)
  Roman Catholics: 20,568 (3.73%)
  Evangelists: 114 (0.02%)
  other: 656 (0.12%)
  By native language:
  Albanians: 331,549 (60.06%)
  Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Macedonians: 180,170 (32.64%)
  Hungarians: 426 (0.08%)
  Germans: 241 (0.04%)
  other Slavs: 771 (0.14%)
  other: 38,907 (7.05%)
  By the 1930s, the efforts and attempts at increasing the Serb population had failed as the Yugoslav census (1931) showed Albanians were 62 percent of the Kosovan population. Colonisation had managed to partially change the demographic situation in Kosovo and the share of Albanians had decreased from 65 percent (289,000) in 1921 to 61 percent (337,272) in 1931 and Serbs increased from 28 percent (114,000) to 32 percent (178,848). State authorities attempted to decrease the Albanian population through "forced migration", a process that grew during the decade. The second phase of Yugoslav colonisation began in 1931, when the Decree on the Colonisation of the Southern Regions was issued on 11 July. This phase of colonisation was considered unsuccessful because only 60 to 80 thousand people (some 17–20 thousand families) showed a willingness to become settlers and gained land, of whom many failed to follow through.
  Based in Ankara, the data gathered for 1919-1940 by the Yugoslav Legation shows 215,412 Albanians migrated to Turkey, whereas data collected by the Yugoslav army shows that until 1939, 4,046 Albanian families went to live in Albania. For 1918 to 1921, Sabrina Ramet cites the estimate that the expulsions of Albanians reduced their numbers from around 800,000 – 1,000,000 within Kosovo down to some 439,500. Between 1923-1939, some 115,000 Yugoslav citizens migrated to Turkey and both Yugoslavian and Turkish sources state that Albanians composed most of that population group.
  Albanian scholars from Albania and Kosovo place the number of Albanian refugees from 300,000 upward into the hundreds of thousands and state that they left Yugoslavia due to duress. Other estimates given by scholars outside the Balkans for Kosovan Albanians that emigrated during 1918–1941 are between 90,000–150,000 or 200,000–300,000. To date, access is unavailable to the Turkish Foreign Ministry archive regarding this issue and as such the total numbers of Albanians arriving to Turkey during the interwar period are difficult to determine.
caption: Serbian colonisation in Kosovo and Vardar Macedonia between 1920 and 1930. Colonised areas are in thick hatched black lines and colonised settlements are shown as black squares
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