Browsing by Author "Ábrahám Jázmin Szonja"

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    Between Privilege and Paradox. Migration, Motherhood, and Stalled Careers
    (2026) Balogh Eszter; Szvetelszky Zsuzsanna; Ábrahám Jázmin Szonja; T. Nagy Judit; Társadalom- és Kommunikációtudományi Intézet; Szociológia Tanszék; KRE - Bölcsészet- és Társadalomtudományi Kar
    This study examines the migration and labour market experiences of highly educated Hungarian mothers living in Vienna through qualitative research. We seek to understand how family migration and motherhood shape these women’s integration and labour market participation. Our findings indicate that mothers remain permanently outside the labour market, a situation stemming not primarily from structural barriers but from intertwined factors: the existential security provided by the husband’s income, traditional norms of motherhood, and the fear of social decline. Mothers’ integration does not appear as a linear process but rather follows a parallel pattern: Women connect with Austrian institutions primarily in an indirect manner by setting up a proxy integration while building strong ties within Hungarian communities, creating a self-segregating co-ethnic integration. The empirical contribution of this study demonstrated in the sample studied is to show that the labour market inactivity of highly educated migrant women is the result of complex social and psychological mechanisms. To capture this phenomenon, we introduce the concepts of “backstage integration” and “social surfing.”
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    Perceived Expressive Reduction in German. Identity, Affect, and Social Relations among Highly Educated Hungarian Migrant Women in Vienna
    (2026) Balogh Eszter; Szvetelszky Zsuzsanna; Hajnal Virág; Ábrahám Jázmin Szonja; T. Nagy Judit; Társadalom- és Kommunikációtudományi Intézet; Szociológia Tanszék; KRE - Bölcsészet- és Társadalomtudományi Kar
    This article examines how highly educated Hungarian migrant women living in Vienna perceive the differences between the expressive possibilities available to them in Hungarian and the communicative possibilities they experience in German and how these differences relate to their identity, emotions, social relationships, and tendencies toward self-segregation. The study is based on a qualitative secondary discourse analysis of 25 anonymised in-depth interviews collected in 2023 as part of a broader research project on women’s social and labour market integration involving participants with self reported German proficiency of at least B2 level. The results identify three recurring patterns. Women often associate the German language with feelings of shame, insecurity, and an inability to express themselves. In the participants’ narratives, this experience is linked to identity-related tensions, a diminished sense of competence, and a subjective loss of status. Ultimately, these experiences are associated with more selective social networking, more cautious participation in German-language contexts, and a preference for Hungarian-language networks as emotionally safer spaces. The article introduces the concept of code reduction to describe this identity-related experience of expressive narrowing, interpreted not as an objective linguistic decline but as a subjective experience in which one is unable to reproduce one’s usual native-language repertoire in the second language. The study argues that the linguistic experience of migration should be understood not only as a matter of language proficiency, but also as an emotional and identity-related dimension of social integration.
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    The Relationship Between Migration Background and Career Benefits in the Lives of Hungarian Mobile Workers in German-Speaking Countries
    (2025) T. Nagy Judit; Szvetelszky Zsuzsanna; Ábrahám Jázmin Szonja; Balogh Eszter; Cziráki Károly Tamás; Társadalom- és Médiakommunikációs Intézet; Szociológia Tanszék; KRE - Bölcsészet- és Társadalomtudományi Kar
    Labour migration from Central and Eastern Europe plays a significant role in the labour market of the European Union, yet few studies examine the direction and extent of occupational mobility triggered by migration. This study introduces a new analytical tool, the Career Benefit Index, which measures the direction of change in occupational status between the labour markets of the country of origin and the host country. The tool also enables the assessment of sociological factors that explain these changes. The index was developed using data from Hungarian workers living in Austria and Germany. The analysis revealed that educational attainment has no significant impact on career mobility. In contrast, demographic factors such as gender, age, and particularly very high-level German language proficiency strongly influence career trajectories. The index demonstrates that labour market capacities play a limited role in shaping migrants’ career paths, as the host labour markets tend to “evaluate” migrant workers primarily based on their linguistic and demographic attributes. The index and the findings contribute to a deeper understanding of labour market integration among Central and Eastern European migrants and may offer new directions for migration and employment policy analysis.