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ABSTRACT
Seeking to understand how socio-historical factors shaped global emigration trends in the new globalization cycle and how Eastern Europe’s integration into these processes might be linked to the rising nationalism and anti-migrant attitudes of this region, we created macro-models on a worldwide sample of 77 countries and examined the impact of the socio-economic change of the early 90’s on later emigration trends. The key research question refers to the macro-historical processes, which facilitated the spread and the rise of anti-migrant nationalism in Eastern Europe. Based on log-linear regression results, we found evidences, which support Bibó’s idea on how the historically evolving “misery” and insecurity of East European nations triggered migration anxieties in the opening-up phase of globalisation. Even though somewhat different developmental trajectories and structural pathways characterize the countries of this region – in terms of the cumulative impacts of opening up to global capital markets, the increasing incomes or re-ruralisation – an ex-socialist Eastern Europe at the fringe of an unequal and open market block seems to be a prime example of how the above pathways could have shaped public mentalities.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Supplementary material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/25739638.2023.2274671.
Notes
1. Via constructing weighted regional averages for larger periods for all countries having at least one survey in the period, then concerning the item of being asked whether the respondent would not have liked to live with an immigrant neighbour.
2. Eastern European states in this analysis: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine.
4. Including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Albania, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia.
5. In the case of countries for which no data was available for 1990 (typically, due to changes of national borders or the disintegration of previous state structures), imputations were carried out proportionally corresponding to the values closest in time.
6. Imputations were carried out based on the values nearest in time or commensurately.
7. Data for 1990 are not available, they were imputed using 1991 values.
8. Imputations were carried out based on the values nearest in time or commensurately.
9. These categories are partly identical with those proposed by Böröcz (Citation2009), however, he set a 200% upper limit for ’Semi-peripheral’ countries.
10. Countries were not included in the sample if their GDP per capita did not reach 10% of the world average in 1990.
11. Concerning the explanatory power of our models, we observed the highest values of adjusted R2 in case of the world-system and joint models (for the period of 1995–2000: 0.8236 and 0.8213; for 1995–2005: 0.4686 and 0.4613 and for 1995–2010: 0.4193 and 0.4118, respectively). Explanatory power of the modernization model was lower during the same periods: 0.3216, 0.0403, and 0.0486, respectively. Considering the joint model, we observe no improvement if educational attainment is added to the world-system model. When examining common variables across different models, the results suggest that they “work” best within the frameworks of the world-systems theories, thus pointing to potential systemic associations that support our hypotheses on positively influencing emigration during the decades of globalization.
12. Here we use some of the results of global modelling in Melegh (Citation2023) and Melegh-Csányi (Citation2021), which are revised, and reinterpreted based on our focus on Eastern Europe.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Attila Melegh
Melegh Attila is a sociologist, economist, and historian. He is an associate professor at Corvinus University, Budapest, and a senior researcher at the Demographic Research Institute. His research focuses on the global history of social change in the twentieth century, and international migration. The author of the renowned book ‘On the East/West Slope, Globalization, Nationalism, Racism and Discourses on Central and Eastern Europe’ published at CEU Press and a new book ‘Migration Turn and Eastern Europe. at Palgrave Macmillan. He was the founding director of Karl Polányi Research Center at Corvinus University between 2014 and 2022.
Zoltán Csányi
Zoltán Csányi started his research career by taking a degree in economics and international relations from Budapest’s Corvinus University. After a volunteer programme with unaccompanied minor immigrants in Spain, he continued studying in a two-year International Migration master’s programme at the University of Valencia, which included time spent in France and Portugal. He is currently a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Barcelona while working as a migration statistician at the Hungarian Central Statistical Office. Email: [email protected]