Interview with Tamás Kiss, YOUMIG project manager and thematic expert at the Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities (Cluj, Romania)

Q: You are currently engaged in a comparative analysis of seven case studies concluded by local thematic experts at the localities involved in the YOUMIG project. Firstly, how do you deal with the large amount of data they collected?

Tamás Kiss: Well, the amount of available data is indeed huge, though still not exhaustive. For the present comparative analysis, we have quantitative data concerning the demographic and migratory trends of each of the seven cities, as well as qualitative data obtained through interviews and focus group discussions. The interview partners were picked from among local institutional actors, such as teachers, municipal decision-makers, or other members of society who are closely witnessing the migration of young people. We also consulted members of “receiving” or “sending” local communities, who are affected also, and last, but not least, the migrants themselves. Of course, the local partners did their fair share in processing locally relevant data, however, for a fine-grained comparison that aims at developing various typologies, or categories for the behaviours and life events we are seeing, we have to go through the raw data again, many times. For instance, a typology of the motivations for migration based on life stories requires a close scrutiny of the relevant intreviews. To meet this aim, about half of the interviews had to be translated into English. Needless to say, I go through the original materials in other languages that I am familiar with, too. It is a very time-consuming, though exciting process.

Q: Did you make any arrangements to share the workload within your team or among the YOUMIG partners?

TK: The work is basically split between the RIRNM and the research team of Vienna University (UNIVIE), me being the primary author of the study currently under way. The quantitative analysis was primarily the task of the Vienna team, whereas I was in charge of the qualitative part. One of the main challenges was to interweave insights gained from these two different perspectives, and in this way to obtain an integrated understanding of migratory, demographic and developmental processes.

Q: Could you please describe briefly the focus of the analysis?

TK: On the one hand, we want to describe the macro-level processes, trends and effects of youth migration based on “hard data”, such as statistics on migration, economic data of the countries and settlements concerned, the local institutional infrastructure and available services, and so on. On the other hand, we also want to map the perspectives and perceptions of different institutional actors in charge of policies concerning youth migration, as well as that of young people involved in different types of migratory processes. So the main question here is: how do the stakeholders perceive issues of local development and migration? The relevance of this question is that in our approach, not just hard developmental factors, but perceptions and interpretative frameworks (let’s call them ideational factors) also shape policies and individual strategies, and might consequently trigger “real” societal change. In other words, these perceptions related to development, migratory trends and the effects of migration will ultimately drive migration policies and migratory practices in one direction rather than another.

Q: And finally, could you give us a teaser for your upcoming YOUMIG working paper on this subject?

TK: It is hard to pick just one or two conclusions, because we obtained lots of very interesting results. One of the most interesting is that we identified two major approaches of migration policies: first, one we might call “demographic nationalism”, focusing on the reproduction of an ethnic-nation, and second, the “utilitarian” framework, which focuses on the reproduction of a labour force, without paying too much attention to cultural differences. Furthermore, these two competing interpretative frameworks are present everywhere, taking the lead, or staying in the background, case by case. In some places, for instance in Kanjiža, in Serbia and Sfântu Gheorghe in Romania, the utilitarian framework is almost missing, and local stakeholders think mostly in ethno-demographic terms. Conversely, in Graz, Austria, the utilitarian discourse dominates, yet “populationist” considerations (though not demographic nationalism) are also strongly present. And finally, there are places in which the two frameworks are simultaneously present and strong, for instance in Burgas, Bulgaria, Szeged, Hungary and the district of Rača-Bratislava, in Slovakia.

Interview by Ágnes Kiss, RIRNM YOUMIG