Who prefers to stay?
Individual and institutional factors supporting immobility among minority and majority Hungarian higher education students in Central Europe
Abstract
Based on the migration models of Carling (2002), de Haas (2021), and Schewel (2020), we examine the (im)mobility aspirations of minority and majority Hungarian students in Central Europe, interpreting their decision to stay as an immobility strategy. We aim to join the line of research arguing that both mobility and immobility are possible responses to an individual’s life circumstances or changes in them (Fischer & Malmberg, 1997). Our aim is to identify individual as well as academic, institutional factors which we hypothesise support students in developing their immobility aspirations. We analyse empirical data based on an international survey. The quantitative survey was based on probability sampling and was conducted in 2019 among students of Hungarian-language higher education institutions in Hungary, Ukraine, Romania, Slovakia, and Serbia (N=2210). The results of multivariate and logistic regression analyses show that the development of immobility aspirations is supported by socio-demographic factors and social networks as well as by institutional and academic factors, such as training programmes preparing students for local professions and a greater degree of trust in the higher education institution and role partners. We aim to contribute with these findings to the academic discourse analysing the migration decisions of minority and majority Hungarians in Central Europe and to draw attention to the impact of higher education integration in a previously mostly undetected area.
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