Uneven economic growth and social development persist both at national and supranational levels. The cumulative effects of these disparities on capital mobility, price flexibility and voluntary interregional migration have been studied extensively. Yet, the issue of how international income disparities influence the evolution of language heterogeneity in sub-national labour markets remains understudied.
Voluntary labour migration among local markets in Central and Eastern Europe becomes an increasingly important issue for analysis, as in this region language borders cross over state borders. Over the last fifteen years these countries have undergone significantly different transitional paths leading to increasing differentials in economic growth and social development. The result is that migration pressures among these countries have strengthened. What is specific to this new pattern of migration is the language dimension, due to the fact that language borders cross over state borders.
The analysis focuses on evaluating the extent to which voluntary labour migration has a language dimension for the case of Hungary as well as the implications of this migration on the language heterogeneity of the main source region. The article seeks to find out to what extent the knowledge of the language spoken in the local labour market is relevant for migrant labour selection in Hungary. Then some of the possible implications of this phenomenon on the source regions’ language mixture are discussed.
The article has three parts. First, we inquire about the extent to which voluntary labour migration is language defined and whether it leads to ethnic homogenisation in the source regions or not. In this case the emphasis is on the origin of labour migrants and the type of migration we are dealing with for the case of Hungary. Second, we look at the target region’s policy problem by focusing on the need to maintain the competitiveness of the economy relying on the quasi-reserve labour from the neighbouring countries. In this case we study the labour demand and supply equilibrium for the general economy and for specific sectors in Hungary. Finally, we discuss the implications of this new pattern of migration for the labour market of the source region. Namely, we look at the issue of labour loss and the dwarfing of the minority in different stages of the economic development.
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