Rural-to-Urban Migration of Young People and Its Effect on Small Cities in Hungary

Changes in rural Hungary have been increasing rapidly ever since the government passed the Local SelfGovernment Act in 1990. The policies set out in this Act affected the local funding systems in Hungary negatively, which led to a rural-to-urban migration in the country. This paper examines the youth’s perception of urban migration in Hungary. Data has been collected via questionnaire-based surveys among students of six high schools of the city of Nagykanizsa in Hungary between January and October of 2018. A total of 1197 filled out forms were collected. This paper has a triple aim: to provide an analysis of the interests of youth in smaller towns seeking answers to what would make them stay in such towns and start their careers locally; to identify the factors that influence their inland rural-to-urban migration and to find out what strategies of rural community centers work best in keeping them home in small cities. Based on our findings, recommendations were drawn up in order to initiate the development of new projects in small cities which utilize the arguments and needs of the local youth discovered in the study area of our survey.