The role of ethnicity and social capital in immigration to Hungary

In the analysis of international migration, the network approach has gained increasing significance since the 1980’s – besides the micro level (concentrating on individual decisions) and the macro level of analysis (which traces migration back to structural forces) –, particularly in the North American and Western European literature on migration.1 By now, a multitude of theoretical and empirical works have proven the viability and the usefulness of this approach, highlighting the fact that migrant networks can maintain migration between two countries over long periods of time despite the disappearance of the individual or structural (economic, political) reasons that originally launched it (Massey et al. 1998). Despite wide scale international recognition, in the research of migration that has unfolded in Hungary since 1989 the network approach has played little role. Although in several studies it is hinted that the decision to migrate is embedded into a network of individual ties, and there are also allusions to the role which interpersonal ties play in the integration of immigrants, the actual presence and role of personal networks within this process has remained unexplored. Immigrants 2002 was the first representative survey which focused on this phenomenon and examined in detail the social ties which migrants had in the target country before immigration, the resources which flowed through these ties and the characteristics of migrant networks after migration. The questionnaire-based survey was carried out by Demographic Research Institute of Budapest in 2002 on a representative sample of 1015 persons aged over 18 who were granted immigrant status in Hungary in 2001. The present paper examining a particular segment of Hungarian immigration – which, at the same time, most powerfully determines the overall trend of immigration – explores the presence and role of migrants’ personal ties and the resources available trough these. The aim of the paper is to present the immigration process to Hungary from neighbouring countries utilising a network perspective and to reveal the role of social capital during migration in a case when most of the immigrants are of the same ethnicity as the receiving population, and thus – contrary to other immigrant groups – ethnic capital is also present in the process. The paper first outlines the present context of the immigration process, as well as its historical background, highlighting the manifestations of its ethnic character to the present day. Next, we briefly review the way in which the network approach appears in migration research and we sum up its most important theoretical results. Then we provide a detailed description of the questions examined, the methods applied and the variables involved in the analysis. This is followed by the analysis of the empirical data exploring the personal ties that immigrants had with the target country before their immigration and the resources (information, help) they were able to mobilize through this. Finally, we summarize the most important results and draw the conclusions.