Rising East Online

Poles Apart

Similarities: Britain and Hungary

Two Nations In Immigration Panic

—Andrea Sinkovics Terezak

Membership of the European Union is not the only thing which Britain and Hungary have in common. In both countries, immigration is high on the agenda.

Enlargement of the European Union in 2004 has brought a new wave of immigrants to Britain. The number of foreigners arriving from new EU states has raised many issues in public life, and prompted a range of opinions, some of them hostile. Eastern Europeans are said to be benefit scroungers and employers’ favourites (due to higher skills and a better work ethic): a difficult double act!

Meanwhile Hungary is facing a similar situation, tantamount to a popular panic about immigrants. The developing economy and living standards of this new EU member have been attracting a large number of incomers from surrounding countries as well as from Asia. Some of those most attracted by the new Hungary are ethnic Hungarians living beyond its borders.

Racist extremism has appeared in an email trail circulating around at least one of London’s universities. The peculiarity of these emails is that they target a new group, Eastern Europeans, who are said to be a blight on British cultural heritage. But many British are liberal rather than xenophobic. Some believe that Eastern Europeans could add something new to the cultural blend of Britain. They think Easterners might be able to set an example in several aspects of life, especially as models of a good work ethic. Despite the existence of liberal attitudes, however, fears of becoming a minority in one’s own country are not confined to the racist fringe

In Hungary, the market has also opened up for foreign labourers since 1 May 2004. However, as a defence against rising unemployment rates and illegal workers, strict regulations are enforced. According to the law of employment, citizens have priority over foreigners in the evaluation of job applications. In other words, a foreigner can only fill a vacant position if there is no Hungarian citizen who meets the requirements of the vacancy. For this reason, for non-citizen Hungarians, the greatest rivals of the Hungarian nationals on the labour market, it remains difficult to get established in the mother country. Although, they can be awarded citizenship on the basis of their ancestry, the post-world-war borders of the country seem to divide not only the territory but the nation itself too. The non-citizens have received only minor support from the Hungarian government. However, securing and fostering their culture and national identity in the surrounding countries where they reside (often fighting against discrimination and atrocity) may become quite burdensome.

As in Britain, extreme attitudes against foreigners have also been generated in Hungary. Some citizens might even reject the idea that non-citizen Hungarians would be part of the same nation as they are. They believe that citizenship equals nationality. Others may still hope to bring the nation together again. A few even dream about re-uniting the ex-Hungarian territories with the mother country, which might be quite similar to what some Northern-Irish people wish for.

In Britain, the popular panic about immigrants has gathered force around the Olympic project and the skilled labour force that it will require. The Olympic Games will provide many thousands of new vacancies. The question is whether Londoners will be competitive in the race for those jobs against the cheap labour of Easterners. Unfortunately, the east side of London is said to “contain some of the least-qualified and least-skilled workers in Britain”. Therefore, the possibility arises that Games contractors will find it more economical to employ transient workers rather than up-skill local ones.

The general attitude of Hungarian citizens to ethnic Hungarians living outside the country was demonstrated in the popular poll held on 6 December 2005. The public was asked to decide whether to give citizenship to non-citizen members of the same nation, or not. To those Hungarians who were emotionally attached to the motherland and were hoping to become part of it, the result was disastrous. Many citizens refused to make a choice and the majority of the rest voted against it.

Popular perception of the immigration issue in Britain does not fit the facts. According to the website of the Home Office, there is no proof that accession workers are exploiting the benefit system. The reports on foreign employees enrolled with the Workers Registration Scheme reveal that in fact they have been contributing a lot to the British economy: “helping to fill gaps in industries such as hospitality, and catering, administration, business, management, agriculture, health and construction” Other studies suggest that Eastern Europeans who don’t find jobs soon after arriving in the UK, are quick to return to Poland having stayed no more than a few months.

What should also be considered is that in many accession states the average knowledge of English is quite poor, at least as compared to Western European countries. In the majority of the ex-communist countries people learned Russian as part of the curriculum, not Western languages. Therefore, many of the immigrants are no match for British workers, since they don’t have a good command of English. So, one of the Easterners’ main reasons to come to England is actually learning the language.

An opening in the case of the Hungarian immigration panic is that awarding citizenship to non-citizen Hungarians might not entail mass-migration. This possibility is suggested by what goes on at the borders of Hungary and Slovakia. Some Hungarians from Slovakia are commuting to work in the mother country everyday. Even though they have the opportunity to settle down in Hungary, having the same rights as every EU citizen, they are still not willing to relocate. Therefore, the most significant group of Hungarians trying to migrate to the motherland might be in fact that those Hungarians who are not citizens of the EU (for example living in Romania, Ukraine or Serbia), who are unprotected from frequent discriminatory incidents in their country of residence, and the majority of whom live on a very low income. But if these Hungarians could rely on strong support from Hungary regarding the local difficulties they face, they probably wouldn’t wish to migrate either.

Andrea Sinkovics Terezak is a student at the University of East London

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