In the contemporary world, marked by the processes of globalization, migration isn’t a novelty. Life stories that are not bound by the borders of a nation state have become normal long time ago, and this is recognized in scientific circles as the formation of transnational social fields and transnational identities. As for Serbia, it is a typical emigration area. The specific circumstances in the Balkans in recent years have further contributed to the outflow of people from the country, and particularly the large outflow of highly educated people.
The main subject of this paper are value orientations of the Serbian intellectual diaspora. The intellectual diaspora of Serbia is a population that has rarely been studied and its importance as a bearer of cultural capital of our country has often been neglected. In this paper, we have opted to study the value orientations, which as a phenomenon reflect the needs, goals, beliefs, principles of people and act as standards of behavior. Changi...ng the place of residence significantly influences different areas of one's life, as well as one’s value orientations. Therefore, the focus of this study was change in value orientations with respect to the length of stay abroad, as well as differences in the expression of value orientations with respect to sociodemographic characteristics.
Given the fact that these types of study have never been done in our county, our research was exploratory and descriptive. The sample consisted of 327 respondents, highly educated members of our diaspora. The value orientations in our research have been operationalized by standardized instruments: Kuzmanović's Value Orientations Test (1995), Inglehart's Scale for measuring Postmaterialistic values (2000) and Bogardus Social Distance Scale (1933) modified in the form used in the European Value Survey (EVS, 2008).
The results of our study suggest that our intellectual diaspora is characterized by expressed openness to the world, expressed secular-rational and self-expression values. This means that they put less emphasis on the importance of religion, traditional values, and respect for authority, and that they are characterized by a strong tolerance toward different social groups and a very positive attitude towards gender equality.
We have also found that there are differences in the value orientations in regard to sociodemographic characteristics, the region of birth and the region of living, but also that the differences in the value orientations are mostly influenced by the level of education and decision about returning to home country. On the other hand, the length of stay abroad significantly predicts greater closeness to the world,
higher level of religiosity, lower level of gender equality, more pronounced traditional values, and greater social distance. Explanation for these results, we found in a transnational environment that marks the lives of migrants. Life in different cultures, in different political and social environments, leads to the development of a transnational identity that incorporates value patterns that originate from the country of origin, as well as the receiving countries.
