Hungary’s New Immigrants - Workshop
Co-organised by the Institute of Sociology and the Institute for Minority Studies at ELTE Centre for Social Sciences, and the Institute for Global Studies, Corvinus University of Budapest
Place and time: 19 November, 2025
ELTE Centre for Social Sciences, Budapest 9, Tóth K.u. 4. Room K.0.11–12.
Zoom link
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86247133810?pwd=cvZFPQA3M2QzTlz49XTf80BgcXqVmP.1
Meeting ID: 862 4713 3810
Passcode: 646820
Link to the Program
The most recent academic volume aimed at producing a comprehensive understanding of Hungary’s immigration situation was published in 2010 (Hárs and Tóth 2010). That volume noted that the share of immigrants both in the country’s population and especially in the work force was among the lowest in the European Union (Hárs 2010:20-22). In the two decades following the 1990 democratic transition, immigration and immigration policy had not been a subject of public debate. With the exception of the migration of ethnic Hungarians from neighbouring countries, immigration had been treated as a policing issue. Discussions about the benefits and risks of immigration and the desirability of an immigration strategy had not gone beyond a narrow circle of academics and professionals (Tóth 2010).
In 2015, this changed: after the European “refugee crisis,” the Hungarian government made combatting immigration a centrepiece of its political discourse, where it has remained since (Barlai and Sik 2017). In September 2015, Hungary’s Parliament declared a state of emergency caused by mass immigration, which has been perpetually extended, allowing the government to rule by decree.
Yet the government maintained an investment-for-immigration scheme it had launched two years earlier, eventually approving around 20,000 applications under it. It also launched a drive to attract more foreign students. By 2022, there were 40 thousand foreign students in the country. Many of these students end up in the work force and stay in the country after graduation. This was followed by the decision, in 2017, to facilitate the introduction of temporary workers from selected countries outside the EU. Beyond this new legislation targeting specific categories of migrants, there is evidence that the issuance of work permits and residential visas based on existing legal frameworks was quietly liberalised. In total, according to official statistics, the number of foreign citizens residing in Hungary grew from 140 to 251 thousand between 2013 and 2024, with Asians registering the steepest growth, from 27 to 93 thousand.
In other words, in the past decade, the Hungarian government has pro-actively facilitated immigration while discursively thematising it in a negative fashion, both of which represents a break with the past. This shift coincided with a gradual shift in both European and global migration patterns. Within Europe, two trends are of particular significance here. First, westward labour migration from the “new,” Eastern member states of the European Union caused labour shortages attracting migration from farther east to fill available jobs, causing a “migration transition.” (Compared to other countries in the region, this transition took place in Hungary with some delay, as large-scale labour emigration did not take place until after 2010.) Second, Eastern Europe slowly emerged as a destination of Western European lifestyle (particularly retirement) migration (Davies, Hayes, and Feischmidt 2022). On a global scale, beyond continuing economic migration and flight from poorer countries, an increasingly salient phenomenon is the rise of middle-class lifestyle migration. As a result of this trend, the semiperipheries of Europe and Asia are increasingly emerging as destinations of both labour and lifestyle migration (Nyíri and Xiang 2022). An exploration of the changing migration scene in Hungary will help us understand these broader processes.
This informal workshop aims both to take stock of the diversity of the new immigration to Hungary and to restart regular exchanges among scholars active in this field. We invite contributions on all aspects of immigration and immigration policy. Emphasis will be on discussion, for which we plan to leave ample time, as much as on individual papers. The workshop will be open to all interested.
Online participation is possible.