The migratory impact of COVID-19: The role of time and distances in the migration decisions of Hungarians during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Despite obvious consequences of pandemics on human mobility, attempts to quantify the migratory impact of COVID-19 remained scarce, largely due to a general lack of data necessary for such assessments. The guiding principle of this paper is that common statistical definitions of migration—linked to usual residences—fail to capture a considerable share of the fast-changing and diverse universe of cross-border movements, which characterized the years of the pandemic. In this study, panels of short- and longer-term movements were created, and hybrid (machine learning-supported) interrupted time series analyses were performed on the basis of pre-pandemic monthly migration flows data to quantify the impact of COVID-19 on international migration. Social insurance data up to 2019 was used to estimate counterfactual emigration and return flows of Hungarians for 2020 and 2021 and compared with actual migration data a posteriori. Beyond the durations of staying abroad, we sought to look at how COVID-related impacts on migration differ by destinations. In accordance with the results, 25% of expected emigrations in cumulative terms had not taken place due to the pandemic if only long-term migrations are considered. This share is 22% when a more flexible conceptualization of geographic mobilities is applied. Behind this relatively small difference, however, there are large variations by destinations. Although similar cumulative impact cannot be detected in case of return migrations, the outbreak of the coronavirus resulted in an unprecedented wave of backwards mobilities, the impact of which however was fading away by the end of the 2-years period.