After the emigration of 240,000 Hungarians, the big change could come last year: are more people actually returning home than leaving?

After many years, the balance changed

Last year, Hungary’s migration balance was 1,272 people without foreign-born foreigners, according to the Demographic Yearbook published by the CSO. Those born abroad should be excluded because, due to simplified naturalization, Hungarians crossing the border have obtained Hungarian citizenship en masse since 2011, and some of them may have emigrated to Hungary, distorting emigration statistics.

The positive migration balance means that fewer Hungarians emigrated abroad than the number of returnees born in Hungary. Similar to the CSO data series

There has never been an example since 1990.

In our previous articles, we examined migration to Western Europe after EU accession in 2004, so we still rely on data from the last fifteen years. According to the statistics office, 21,900 Hungarians emigrated last year, while 23,172 returned home, resulting in the previous positive balance.

Compared to the previous year, emigration decreased slightly, but this was offset by the fact that almost two thousand fewer people left according to official statistics. The graph also shows that return migration has been practically stagnant for years, while the propensity to emigrate is declining. Demographically, the most painful year was 2014, when Hungary had a negative balance of 20,000 people, which has now been resolved.

The data series also shows that since joining the EU, almost 240,000 Hungarians have tried their luck abroad for a longer or shorter period of time, although the return migration was almost 130,000.

Austria, Germany and the UK remain the most attractive

According to CSO data, in 2019, a total of more than 470 thousand Hungarian citizens lived in European countries. As we have written about this several times in previous years, the main destination was Germany, Austria and the United Kingdom. According to official data, in 2019 there were almost 200,000 Hungarians in Germany, almost 83,000 in Austria and 78,000 in the United Kingdom. We will return to the reliability of this data later.

The 2019 emigration statistics also do not show a significant change compared to the previous trend. According to the yearbook, almost 7,500 Hungarians emigrated to Austria last year, 6,100 to Germany and 2,800 to the UK. This may indicate that

Emigration to the UK in particular may have decreased, in which Brexit may also have played a role.

Incidentally, the Demographic Yearbook also supports the earlier view that it is primarily the “most valuable” people of working age who migrate. Last year, more than 40% of all registered migrants came from the age group 15-29 years, 26% were between 30 and 39 years old and another 18.4% were between 40 and 49 years old. This trend was similar for the three main target countries.

The post also shows that Zala County, Baranya County, and Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County were at the forefront of emigration, with more than 1,500 people from the three areas going abroad in one year. In addition, more than a thousand emigrants from the counties of Bács-Kiskun, Hajdú-Bihar and Csongrád-Csanád were measured. However, most of them emigrated from Budapest due to their size, more than 4,100.

If we look at emigration, Austria was also in the lead with almost 7,000 people, but almost 6,400 from Germany and almost 4,900 from the UK also returned. Of course, the migration of Hungarians within Europe may have changed significantly in recent years, for example, it is not entirely certain that anyone moving home from the UK due to Brexit will easily return to find another destination even within the continent.

How reliable is this data?

We have also written several times that the reliability of international migration data is highly questionable and, at best, only adequate to indicate magnitudes and trends. On the one hand, only those who leave the country for at least 12 months are included in the dataset and, on the other hand, with the free movement of labor in Europe, it is difficult to measure migration between Member States. In principle, there is some form of registration in all Member States (social security, unemployment benefits, etc.), but it is not compulsory and many can be left out.

In recent years, it has been proven repeatedly that international migration statistics should not be trusted uncritically:

• By 2018, the OSC had already reported a change similar to the current one, with a positive migration balance of almost 2,000 people, and then it turned negative during the review.
• British official statistics have long been suspected of significantly underestimating the number of Hungarians living in the country. Due to the Brexit registration, this process is starting to work, the British Office of Statistics (ONS) has already changed its 2019 data from 77 thousand to 109 thousand, while the Demographic Yearbook still awaits 77 thousand data. We still think that even taking into account the impact of Brexit, the real figure could be between 150-200 thousand.
• At the moment, the long-term effects of Brexit are not known either, as we already know that as of June more than 100,000 Hungarians had registered in the island nation, that they would like to stay after leaving, and that registration is possible until next July . In other words, leaving the EU may curb recent emigration, but those who are now registering for permanent settlement are likely to plan for the country in the long term.

In general, the positive trend is difficult to argue, on the one hand there has been a notable decrease in willingness to emigrate, and on the other hand, those who have tried their luck abroad are constantly returning home. However, we could speak of a real change if this trend lasted for years. It is not a good sign that emigration exceeds 20,000 even in 2019, the question for the next period may be how Brexit will redesign emigration processes, which may lead to a permanent decrease in the willingness or only to choose another country of destination. Hungarians.

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