Authors

Discussion

The presentation intends to investigate the unknown history of Hungarians in Britain. Framing the migration from Hungary means I cover the history of immigrants and refugees and their experiences. Besides the two large refugee groups that arrived between 1948 and 1950 and after the uprising in 1956, there were legal and illegal immigrants from Hungary from 1945 until 1989. The history of Hungarian immigration between 1945 and 1989 is an undiscovered territory in English and Hungarian historical literature. Although a couple of papers and books had been published in English and Hungarian, all of them discussed just one particular group of Hungarian refugees in Britain and didn’t explore the whole subject in the above mentioned period. Therefore my research could be the first comprehensive account of the Hungarian immigrants in Britain, which aims to uncover the history of the Hungarians who arrived and settled in Britain between the end of the Second World War and the democratic transformation of Hungary.
I aim to show the story of the Hungarians from their arrival to their settlement, the official views about them, their memory of their reception, hardships and challenges. But firstly I need to establish the number of Hungarians in Britain. The census data from the period in question tells us the number of residents born outside the British Isles. Therefore the number of Hungarians living in Britain is known in 1951, 1961, 1971and 1981, but the number of Hungarian refugees and immigrants who arrived in Britain needs to be refined. Therefore the first goal is to speak about the statistics and estimate the number of Hungarian refugees and immigrants who arrived in Britain. The second goal is to speak about the personal histories of these groups to reveal their voices and stories exploring oral history interviews, memoirs and diaries. The first large cohort of Hungarian refugees arrived in Britain between 1948 and 1950. Under the European Volunteer Workers scheme, 2554 Hungarians (2110 men, 429 women, 15 children) landed from the European DP camps to work and settle in the country. In 1956 after the Russians invaded Hungary and ended the revolution, almost 21000 Hungarians found refuge in Britain. The history of EVWs is now part of the British immigration history although the narrative of the specific ethnic groups is not revealed yet. Thankfully, some very important research has been published in the last decades about the refugee crisis of 1956. For example, Tony Kushner’s and Becky Taylor’s publications cover this subject and position it in British immigration history. But in both cases the Hungarian experience, the voice of the refugees is missing from or not dominant enough in the narrative. Through the period, I explore the memories of the historical actors' own experiences, attitudes, and perceptions to reveal the various life stories from the reception to the settlement.