Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the working of a transnational labor network across the border of Hungary and Germany, by shedding light on the role of informal staffing agents in recruiting those precariat laborers from Hungary who try to practice their "right to escape" by "existential mobility".

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the working of a transnational labor network across the border of Hungary and Germany, by shedding light on the role of informal staffing agents in recruiting those precariat laborers from Hungary who try to practice their "right to escape" (Mezzadra 2004) by "existential mobility" (Hage 2009). We show the different roles each agents play in this transnational labor trade network or migration industry which is an avenue of capital (Vertovec 1999).

The paper also analyses the historical embeddedness of labor mobility of the rural Hungarian poor by drawing attention to the process of "interrupted continuity": how the long sedentary Hungarian poor (Roma and non Roma) became from weekly commuters during socialism, to transnationally mobile factory workers, after an intermittent period of "long term unemployment" due to the transition from state socialism to neoliberal capitalism in Hungary.

The article aims to provide a close ethnographic portrait to interpret the currently most typical migration trajectory, the "guest work" providing to Chinese family restaurant owners and small entrepreneurs of Hungarian origins in the construction industry in German towns.

Building on the inspirational work of anthropologists and mobility scholars who propose to resort to a global and multi-dimensional perspective on transnational movement when exploring cross border migration and its consequences, we have carried out during the last three years a multi-sited ethnography, both in the sending and in the destination localities, following our informants and their network on their movement from their homes in North Hungary to their German employers.