Slovenia Emigration and Immigration

Online Sources

 * 1850-1934 Auswandererlisten, 1850-1934 (Hamburg passenger lists) at FamilySearch, images.
 * 1850-1934 Hamburg Passenger Lists, 1850-1934 at Ancestry, ($) index and images.
 * 1855-1924 Hamburg Passenger Lists, Handwritten Indexes, 1855-1934 at Ancestry, ($) images.
 * Hamburg, Germany Emigrants at Findmypast, ($) index.
 * 1890-1960 Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890-1960 at Findmypast; index & images ($)
 * 1892-1924 New York Passenger Arrival Lists (Ellis Island), 1892-1924 Search results for Slovenia
 * 1946-1971 Free Access: Africa, Asia and Europe, Passenger Lists of Displaced Persons, 1946-1971 Ancestry, free. Index and images. Passenger lists of immigrants leaving Germany and other European ports and airports between 1946-1971. The majority of the immigrants listed in this collection are displaced persons - Holocaust survivors, former concentration camp inmates and Nazi forced laborers, as well as refugees from Central and Eastern European countries and some non-European countries.

British Overseas Subjects

 * British Armed Forces and Overseas Births and Baptisms, index & images ($)


 * British Armed Forces and Overseas Banns and Marriages,, index & images ($)


 * British Armed Forces and Overseas Deaths and Burials, index & images ($)

Offices and Archives to Contact
Two types of emigration records in Slovenia are applications of emigrants and lists of those departing. Nineteenth century emigrants had to prove fulfillment of obligations concerning land or property and young men had to prove they were not subject to military service. These records began in 1857 and continue to the present. Applications normally record names and dates of birth for all emigrants; other information may vary. These records are stored at the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia.
 * Archives of the Republic of Slovenia.

Passenger Lists in the Port of Trieste
Trieste, the main Austrian port, assumed the function of the port of emigration in 1904. The number of people who emigrated via the Port of Trieste was for a long time recorded only in the form of summary reports according to gender as well as province or country of origin.
 * Austrian State Archive

Only in 1912 did the Trieste port authorities begin compiling detailed passenger records that included name and surname, age, marital status, profession, last place of residence, citizenship, port of destination as well as the ship and the date of departure for each steerage passenger. One copy of these records for the period 1912-1914 can be found in the Austrian State Archive in Vienna in the records of the Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Trade, one copy for 1914 is also kept by the State Archive in Trieste in the records of the Maritime Government. The records include data on a total of nearly 87000 emigrants who emigrated during those years via Trieste to the USA, South America and Canada with the Austrian national company Austro-Americana, the English Cunard Line and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. Nearly half of all emigrants came from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, while the rest of them were predominently from Russia, Türkiye, Greece, Italy, and Romania.

Finding the Town of Origin in Slovenia
If you are using emigration/immigration records to find the name of your ancestors' town in Slovenia, see Slovenia Finding Town of Origin for additional research strategies.

Slovenia Emigration and Immigration
"Emigration" means moving out of a country. "Immigration" means moving into a country. Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving (emigrating) or arriving (immigrating) in the country. These sources may be passenger lists, permissions to emigrate, or records of passports issued. The information in these records may include the emigrants’ names, ages, occupations, destinations, and places of origin or birthplaces. Sometimes they also show family groups.

Historical Background

 * Slovenia has historically been the crossroads of Slavic, Germanic, and Romance languages and cultures.
 * The territory of modern-day Slovenia has been part of many different states; the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Carolingian Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary, the Republic of Venice, the Illyrian Provinces, the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary.
 * In October 1918, the Slovenes co-founded the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. In December 1918, they merged with the Kingdom of Serbia into the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
 * During World War II, Germany, Italy, and Hungary occupied and annexed Slovenia, with a tiny area transferred to Croatia, a Nazi puppet state at that time.
 * In 1945, it became a founding member of Yugoslavia.
 * In June 1991, Slovenia became the first republic that split from Yugoslavia and became an independent sovereign state.

Immigration into Slovenia

 * In 2015, about 12% (237,616 people) of the population in Slovenia was born abroad. About 86% of the foreign-born population originated from other countries of former Yugoslavia as (in descending order) Bosnia-Herzegovina, followed by immigrants from Croatia, Serbia, North Macedonia, and Kosovo.
 * Relatively small but protected by the Constitution of Slovenia are the Hungarian and the Italian ethnic minority.

Emigration From Slovenia

 * Between 1880 and 1918 (World War I) many men left Slovenia to work in mining areas in other nations. The United States in particular has been a common choice for emigration, with the 1910 US Census showing that there were already "183,431 persons in the USA of Slovenian mother tongue". But there may have been many more, because a good number avoided anti-Slavic prejudice and "identified themselves as Austrians."
 * Favorite localities before 1900 were Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, as well as Omaha, Nebraska, Joliet, Illinois, Cleveland, Ohio, and rural areas of Iowa.
 * After 1910, they settled in Utah (Bingham Copper Mine), Colorado (especially Pueblo), and Butte, Montana.
 * These areas attracted first many single men (who often boarded with Slovenian families). After locating work and having sufficient money, the men sent back for their wives and families to join them.
 * KNOMAD Statistics: Emigrants: 171,300. Top destination countries: Croatia, Germany, Austria, Serbia, Canada, the United States, Australia, Switzerland, Italy, France