Chapter 4
Pursuing a “Better Life” in Hungary
In: Handbook of Chinese Migration to EuropeSearch for other papers by Fanni Beck in
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Abstract
This chapter examines the causes behind the diversity and size of the ethnic Chinese immigrant community in Budapest, Hungary. Ranging from traders to international students to lifestyle migrants and their descendants, I show how the contemporary composition of the Chinese diaspora in Budapest came about, and how it reflects China’s changing position within the capitalist world system. Employing the framework of capabilities and aspirations as proposed by de Haas, I compare two historically distinct mobilities that have shaped two important segments of the Chinese diaspora in Hungary: economic migrants of the 1990s and lifestyle migrants of the 2010s. I analyse how two migration pathways enabled these historically distinct cohorts in their markedly different quests for a “better life,” reflecting a shift in emphasis from production to reproduction. Employing anthropological methods, I explore what a “better life”—understood as the intersection of capabilities and aspirations—signifies for these cohorts and how it is lived in their day-to-day use of the city’s spaces and the online spaces of WeChat. The chapter concludes by suggesting possible future trajectories for research on the changing motivations of migrants, centring around “better life” narratives.