Migrants in Hungarian agriculture

Abstract

As part of an ongoing survey, this study analyses the correlation between the changes in agricultural employment and the process of international migration as well as the role of foreign seasonal labourers in Hungarian agriculture.

The first part of the paper contains a perusal of statistical data and investigates the quality of changes and the territorial placement of foreign seasonal workers. The second part describes the established organisation of work and networks, as well as the characteristic groups of seasonal farm workers, based on interviews conducted with farmers and seasonal labourers.

The structural changes within agriculture after the change of the political system and the ensuing boom in labour demand on farms led to the establishment of a market for seasonal labour, the emergence of new employee groups, and the revival and strengthening of traditional labour structures. The changes in agricultural employment occurred simultaneously with the increase in international migration which the citizens of neighbouring countries joined as well.

Among the low-wage employees, flexibly accommodating the needs of their employers, the appearance of foreign – especially Romanian – seasonal labourers led to an extension of labourorganising relational networks, increased border crossing and a surge in the number of available seasonal workers. Although the numbers of foreign seasonal labourers in regions with a shortage of labour decreased significantly in recent years, Romanian day-labourers will continue to contribute to the local agricultural workforce as long as the wage differences between the two countries will not decrease.

Meanwhile, the composition of the ethnic and societal background of seasonal workers has changed, the farmers’ networks for mobilising migrants have weakened and became partially differentiated, so that there are now regions in which they have completely disappeared.

Hungarian farmers could not keep all their seasonal labourers after Romania’s accession to the EU in 2007, since jobseekers preferred countries with a higher wage level. Nevertheless a valuable labour pool made up of heterogeneous groups of migrant seasonal labourers formed over the past fifteen years. Its members are bound in different ways to the farms and the farmers who offer them work.