Migration anxieties in Eastern Europe. Material grounds for an anti-migrant turn in a global-historical perspective?

ABSTRACT Seeking to understand how socio-historical factors shaped global emigration trends in the new globalization cycle and how Eastern Europe’s integration into these processes might be linked to the rising nationalism and anti-migrant attitudes of this region, we created macro-models on a worldwide sample of 77 countries and examined the impact of the socio-economic change of the early 90’s on later emigration trends. The key research question refers to the macro-historical processes, which facilitated the spread and the rise of anti-migrant nationalism in Eastern Europe. Based on log-linear regression results, we found evidences, which support Bibó’s idea on how the historically evolving “misery” and insecurity of East European nations triggered migration anxieties in the opening-up phase of globalisation. Even though somewhat different developmental trajectories and structural pathways characterize the countries of this region – in terms of the cumulative impacts of opening up to global capital markets, the increasing incomes or re-ruralisation – an ex-socialist Eastern Europe at the fringe of an unequal and open market block seems to be a prime example of how the above pathways could have shaped public mentalities.