Central and Eastern European Migration Review

In 2015, the inflow of immigrants to Europe increased dramatically. More than 1 million people fled from wars and conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly affecting transit countries along the Western Balkan route. Of all the transit countries, the Hungarian government was particularly vocal in its negative attitude towards immigrants, launching several anti-immigration campaigns which had a detrimental effect on residents’ hostility towards these immigrants. In this study, we focus on the mechanisms behind this increased hostility in a transit-country context by combining insights from integrated-threat theory and contact theory. We find that perceptions of realistic and symbolic threat increased negative attitudes towards immigrants. Importantly, these threat perceptions were shaped by people’s positions in society and personal circumstances, in combination with their contact with immigrants. Specifically, in the harsh and negative Hungarian context, contact negatively influenced threat perceptions, especially amongst people who were at risk of experiencing negative consequences supposedly caused by the influx of immigrants. This in-depth country case study emphasises the importance of contextualising research findings on attitudes towards immigration in a broader social and political context.

Historically, approaches within the field of migrant entrepreneurship have almost exclusively focused on migration to nation-states in the Global North. Despite more-recent studies extending the scope to migrants’ home countries – and even third-country locations – they have nonetheless remained rooted in South–North migratory contexts and, subsequently, have been mainly theorised based on the concept of persistent power imbalances internationally. Indeed, studies of migrant entrepreneurship in reverse (North–South) migratory contexts have exposed a number of assumptions implicit within these approaches. What is needed, therefore, is a theoretical approach which can account for the global asymmetry hitherto overlooked in the field of migrant entrepreneurship. This paper aims to do exactly that, offering the concept of ‘global embeddedness’, which situates the phenomenon of migrant entrepreneurship within a wider, asymmetrical global environment and, in so doing, provides a way of accounting for variations in migrant entrepreneurship found outside of the Global North.

This paper presents the concept of the emigration region that emerged as a result of wide research identifying the causes of emigration and migration networks, as well as the demographic and socio-economic consequences of significant emigration for particular regions. It is an overview based on long-standing research by the authors and draws heavily on numerous contributions that address the links between regional development and long-term migration outflow. The hypothesis is that an emigration region is formed under the influence of long-term and mass emigration resulting in progressive depopulation and characterised by a set of economic, social and cultural features clearly distinguishing it from regions where such a pattern of relationships is either missing or incidental. Identified features of emigration regions include a well-established tradition of emigration, the long-term nature of emigration, a significant quantitative dimension of emigration, well-developed networks of social relationships between the countries of outflow and inflow, the complex socio-political and economic reasons for emigration and the specific consequences of it, observed both at the individual (micro) level and at the level of local and regional communities (the meso level). The concept of an emigration region is illustrated by the example of the Opolskie Voivodeship (Poland, a NUTS-2 region). The concept of an emigration region emerged as a result of many years of research by the authors, implemented mainly in the Opolskie Voivodeship. The research methods were diverse (including quantitative and qualitative social research) and the research was conducted among the entities involved to varying degrees in broadly understood migration processes (emigrants, re-emigrants, regional and local governments, entrepreneurs).

How is the well-being of returnees when considered from the point of view of the migration experience abroad? To answer this question, the first hypothesis considers that returnees differ in the function of the key activity they had abroad – working, studying or living there without working or studying. Secondly, even if one maintains constant socio-demographic profiles, the country of return counts. Thirdly, it depends also on the facet of subjective well-being (SWB) that is considered – the happiness of living in a certain country of the European Union or a person’s satisfaction with life, country, public services or income. The results of the multivariate analysis indicate that experience of migration, country of current residence and facets of SWB all count. Returnees – through their experience of migration abroad – are compared to non-migrants. The answers come from analysing data from a large Eurobarometer survey in the European Union. Multivariate regression and cluster analysis are the main data-processing procedures. The stability of the results is tested by sensitivity analysis.

This article examines the role of ethnic networks in the development of migrant communities by focusing on modern-day Armenian migration to Russia. While much existing research on migrant networks tends to focus on newly arrived migrants’ experiences of gaining support in the destination countries through ethnic networks, little has been said about the impact of ethnic networks on migrant community development. Additionally, studies on the Armenian communities’ development are mainly focused on the historical context and scholars see little interest in studying modern-day Armenian migration and migrant community development. Drawing on empirical data from Armenia, this study explores how post-Soviet migration to Russia shapes contemporary Armenian communities there. Through a combination of quantitative and qualitative research conducted in 2020−2021, the article studies the significance of ethnic networks at both individual and collective levels. The quantitative research results offer insights into the role of ethnic networks in shaping migratory routes, while qualitative research highlights how these networks contribute to community construction, driven by regional affiliations that differ from traditional Armenian diaspora institutions. The study reveals the multiple roles of ethnic networks, including their influence on migratory behaviour, their persistence and importance across generations and their impact on community organisations’ development and leadership. It also highlights migrants’ preferences for engaging with their regions or villages of origin.

This article investigates the subjective life satisfaction of Russian immigrant physicians in Finland. It focuses on how life satisfaction is subjectively experienced and interpreted post migration in a bid to identify the resources which influence it in both work and family domains. The advantage of life satisfaction is taking it as a unifying cross-disciplinary conceptual framework and as a multidimensional analytical approach, including macro-societal, meso-relational, and micro-personal levels. We use the concept of the migratory career to analyse work and family life on migration journeys. These life evaluations are analysed using a sociological conception of subjective life satisfaction and a psychological conception of wellbeing as guiding principles in theory and analysis. Based on 26 semi-structured qualitative interviews, the study finds that an interplay between societal-structural and personal-relational resources makes the interviewees satisfied with their work and family lives. Societal-structural resources included the work environment, income, life security and stability, while personal-relational resources included social support, social trust, and family relationships. Beyond the classical income and job security, we find our participants’ experienced and interpreted life satisfaction is essentially associated with outcomes of family-friendly and supportive work conditions. Moreover, social and personal security and family stability are important for their quality of life in a characteristic Nordic social environment.