As the YOUMIG project approaches its mid-term, our partners in Szeged, Hungary, held a second forum to present results concerning the inward, outward and return migration of youth in the Danube region. The main issues addressed this time were young people’s motivations for migration, as well as related issues around family formation and labour market participation, as seen in the local case study completed in Szeged within the YOUMIG project. Capacity building plans at the municipality were also discussed at the forum, held on April 17, 2018 at the Youth Centre on the banks of the river Tisza, in Szeged.

Szeged is a city in the vicinity of Hungary’s borders with Serbia and Romania, and one of the important stopping points of irregular migration routes headed towards western Europe. For this reason, news and opinions about migration in general and specifically about undocumented migration take on an important role in the media and in the day-to-day lives of local people. The campaign season leading up to Hungary’s general election on 8 April 2018 also added to heightened sentiments and thinking about migration in the general public. YOUMIG researchers and staff were interested to see how residents and the media would react to the topic of youth migration and project results so far, under these circumstances.

A brief press conference was held before the forum, where the deputy mayor Sándor Nagy and deputy project manager Béla Soltész introduced the mid-term achievements of the project to the public. Nagy said that Szeged welcomes the YOUMIG project as it is clear that the city experiences “outward”, “inward” and “return” migration as well. As an example he mentioned that more and more citizenship vows are being taken by non-Hungarian speakers or even by applicants who have no Hungarian family members at all. These candidates for Hungarian citizenship are mainly from nearby Romania and Serbia, but they are often not members of the ethnic Hungarian community there. “Integration for them is not easy, but the city [of Szeged] strives to give every support it can to their efforts,” Nagy said.

Migration processes often give the Municipality some administrative challenges, for example when the number of places in nurseries (day care) are planned. While before it was usual that the number of children born in a certain year corresponded with the number of nursery places required a few years later, this is no longer the case: parents who move abroad take along the children and they are no longer enrolled in an educational facility in Szeged, but somewhere abroad. In municipal planning it is also vital to see the motivations behind the statistics in order to see the needs of immigrants or return migrants in city services. The capacities built and developed in this project are ones that will help the city in planning, Nagy added.

Soltész talked about the main aims and the frame of the YOUMIG project, including outputs, local case studies and good practices produced in its first 18 months. He talked briefly about YOUMIG’s One-Stop-Shop scheme, a service for residents involved in any of the three types of migration (in- out- and return migration) to be launched simultaneously at all 7 municipalities in the YOUMIG partnership network. He also gave an overview of pilot actions that are being introduced at the YOUMIG localities, including Szeged.

The first part of the forum was organised for the general public, including the young people of Szeged, who were intrested to hear about YOUMIG results. Gábor Feleky, a sociologist and economist who prepared the local case study for YOUMIG in Szeged, presented findings to the audience. Using charts to present local migration statistics and quotes from the many interviews completed locally, Feleky drew the conclusion that Szeged is a city where immigrants are present, where young people think about going abroad and where some of them return after a certain period of time. The full analysis about the situation in Szeged can be read here.

The NGO Menedék is providing assistance and planning support to Szeged for organising a pilot action in the coming 12 months. Ildikó Barcza from Menedék presented plans to the audience which were about an intercultural training series ­or special teaching and coping techniques to be shared with nursery (day care) teachers who have children with a migration background in their class. Training will also be offered to municipality staff who can thus expand their knowledge about migration in general and the needs of people who might turn to them with questions in Szeged. Later in the day in a smaller circle, nursery teachers were invited to share their thoughts about their needs regarding such a training. Several participants indicated that one of the biggest problems is language competences, or dealing with the parents of a child who does not speak Hungarian. Earlier teachers usually met situations where at least one parent spoke Hungarian, but nowadays it can happen that there is a complete language gap between nurses and parents. However, they said that children are the ones who pick up Hungarian quickly and can to a certain extent translate for the parents. The idea came up that student volunteers could be engaged by nurseries to help connect with parents using English or the immigrant families’ native language. Also information about where Hungarian language courses can be taken in Szeged should be shared with immigrant parents. In a different situation, one teacher said that many ethnic Hungarian families from Serbia come to live in Szeged, and although they speak Hungarian, they are often bilingual and constitute their own local community with their own Serbian nursery group. However communication across these different communities works well, she said.

Another short presentation was held about the One-Stop-Shop (OSS) service with ideas about how it would operate in Szeged. Information was exchanged about resources and possible points of cooperation with similar projects. Staff of regional government offices were also present and agreed to channel relevant administrative information to the YOUMIG OSS.

In the coffee break participants were invited to view a photo exhibition of portraits by Anna Bobkó on foreign students living in Szeged. The exhibition was opened with a Hungarian contemporary poem with a migration theme recited to the audience by a young local student. The photographs can be viewed here.

Text and photos by the YOUMIG Szeged team

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