THE MIGRATION OF HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS FROM HUNGARY – GLOBAL FLOWS AND LOCAL RESPONSES

Abstract

The migration of health care workers is a longstanding process which causes shortages in the sending countries. The Eastern enlargements of the European Union strengthened the East-West migration flows causing serious political controversies and jeopardising medical services. Hungary is also heavily affected by these processes and in the last 10 years; thousands of doctors and nurses left the country. Managing migration processes requires complex policy answers with the involvement of actors from various spatial scales – but most of the studies on medical migration from Hungary focuses on the national scale. To fill this research gap, this study aims to analyse local political responses to the outmigration through the content analysis health care development documents to reveal the role of local scale. On local scale individual needs and preferences, emotional factors can influence the decision on staying or moving. Therefore, local policies, which take local features into account and apply place-based approach, can be useful elements of (re)migration policies in the case of health care workers, too