Residence patterns in nineteenth century Hungary: Evidence from the Hungarian MOSAIC sample

Quantitative and qualitative changes began in 1988 after four decades of a controlled and restrictive migration system in Hungary. Due to the political transformation process in East Central Europe, there was also a transformation in international migration flows. Hungary became integrated into the international migration system in a new way. There was a significant growth of migration flows in Hungary which became a receiving and a transit country after a long period of being a sending area. This progress was strongly related to the collapse of the People’s Democratic Republic of Germany (GDR), the last phase of Ceausescu’s rule in Romania, and the civil war in the former Yugoslavia (Dövényi–Vukovich 1994; Tóth 1996; Juhász 1997). In 1990–1991 the number of immigrants to Hungary reached a peak and thereafter fell steeply till the mid-1990s when it started to rise again. The annual absolute number of foreign immigrants stabilised around 15,000 and the number of emigrating foreign citizens stabilised at the level of 2,000 per year. In the second half of the 1990’s the annual numbers increased to 20,000 immigrants and there was no change in the emigration flow. As a result of the continuous inflows and moderate outflows, the number of foreign citizens staying in Hungary rose steadily. At the end of 1999 more than 150,000 long-term immigrants were living in Hungary, so their share within the total population rose above 1.5%. It is worth mentioning that this is a low rate from a European perspective. In spite of continuing processes the total number of foreign immigrants decreased radically from one year to another (110,000 at the end of 2000) and since then the number has been moving in a hectic manner.