The female side of migration

Abstract

This study examines whether there are differences between women and men in their relationship with migration. It has already been proven that today more and more women becomes part of the international migration wave. In most of the cases they move in order to escape poverty and unemployment. In this article we shed light on migration’s current situation in Hungary. In order to test our hypothesis, we surveyed citizens who moved from Hungary and are working abroad. The result of this research confirmed our hypothesis that women’s migration can fall into two main types. First, there are women who make their own decision as an individual and decide to work abroad alone. Second, there are women who follow their husband or partner and make decisions together.

The goal of this research was to discover the characteristics of women’s migration and to decide if there is non-specific progress or not. To achieve this goal, we used a primer questionnaire.

In our survey, we dealt differently with the answers coming from women and men because our main aim was to examine the reasons and tendencies of women’s migration. The survey was filled in online with a snowball method. All in all we received 105 answers in the first half of May, 2017, 70 of which coming from women. It happened only by accident that twice as many women answered as men. However, this ratio was adequate to handle men’s answer as the control group.

The answers have been processed using Microsoft Excel and IBM SPSS Statistics 24. We used crosstabulation analysis to find out the relationship between temporal and permanent abroad stay. We assessed this relation using the Chi-square of Pearson. We also made a variance analysis in order to discover influencing factors of migration decisions and to shed light on the sex differences. Furthermore, we also made a factor analysis on decision influencers.

Based on our research and assessments, we argue that there are two main motivational factors behind women’s migration. First, the desire for gaining experience and, second, the lack of job opportunities. Most of the women are married or have a relationship and only consider returning home. Men played an important role in the decision making process that lead to mobility. Single women, in general, are younger and definitely want to return to Hungary after some years. We can say also argue that for women, who went far away from Hungary, migration was a final choice, and are not considering going back.