'Should We Leave or Stay?' Notes on Recent Hungarian Outmigration

This preliminary study is based on Hungarian electronic media sources, informal interviews and similar personal communications, as well as statistical data provided by kind and cooperative colleagues in Hungary. Addressing the recent, massive outmigration from Hungary, the article explores some of the primary push-and-pull factors, and then discusses responses to the emigration phenomenon itself and its likely long-term demographic, social and economic implications, by scholars as well as by politicians from both the governing party and the opposition. To give the emic perspective, I cited and translated from my conversations with a few young emigrants, would-be-emigrants, and mothers’ of these young people, and thus illustrate the issue from those most involved. Then, by also citing scholars, authors, columnists, and politicians my aim was to offer the etic, or outsiders’ view, but – since for various reasons – they also appear to be involved in and concerned with the problem of outmigration, theirs is still an emic perspective, though of a different order. Realizing that the present attempt is merely a quick snapshot of an ongoing, potentially volatile and dynamic process, further research and a multidisciplinary attempt to interpret and analyze the recent emigration from Hungary are needed