Hungary Emigration and Immigration

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Finding the Town of Origin in Hungary

If you are using emigration/immigration records to find the name of your ancestors' town in Hungary, see Hungary Finding Town of Origin for additional research strategies.

Hungary Emigration and Immigration

"Emigration" means moving out of a country. "Immigration" means moving into a country.
Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving (emigrating) or arriving (immigrating) in the country. These sources may be passenger lists, permissions to emigrate, or records of passports issued. The information in these records may include the emigrants’ names, ages, occupations, destinations, and places of origin or birthplaces. Sometimes they also show family groups.

Hungarian Diaspora

  • Hungarian diaspora is a term that encompasses the total ethnic Hungarian population located outside current-day Hungary.
  • There are two main groups of the diaspora.
  • The first group includes those who are indigenous rather than descended from migrants or colonists to their homeland and live outside Hungary since the border changes of the post-World War I Treaty of Trianon of 1920. The victorious forces redrew the borders of Hungary so that it runs through Hungarian majority areas. As a consequence, 3.3 million Hungarians found themselves outside the new borders.
  • The other main group is the emigrants who left Hungary at various times (such as the Hungarian Revolution of 1956).
  • Hungarian immigration patterns to Western Europe increased in the 1990s and especially since 2004, after Hungary's admission in the European Union. Thousands of Hungarians from Hungary sought available work through guest-worker contracts in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Finland, Sweden, Spain and Portugal.

Distribution by Country

Neighbor countries of Hungary--Hungarians who live outside Hungary since the 1920 border changes

  • Romania 1,227,623
  • Slovakia 458,467
  • Serbia 253,899
  • Ukraine 156,600
  • Austria 90,000
  • Croatia 14,048
  • Slovenia 10,500

Other Countries (with links to more detailed Wikipedia articles)

Records of Hungarian Emigrants in Their Destination Nations

Dark thin font green pin Version 4.png One option is to look for records about the ancestor in the country of destination, the country they immigrated into. See links to immigration records for major destination countries below.