Migrants as Entrepreneurs: The Lively Neighbourhoods of Józsefváros

Colourful and vibrant, the 8th District of Budapest is home to the most concentrated immigrant communities from the capital city. The first migrants to enter Hungary and come here were the Chinese, who arrived in the years following the collapse of the communist regime.

Together with the Arabs, who started settling in the neighbourhood a decade later, the Chinese constitute nowadays the most numerous migrant populations in the district. As several Vietnamese and Turkish small businesses are also important parts of the picture, the infamous 8 ker. shows signs of developing an image of a groovy cosmopolitan village – an attraction for tourists, and a study object for sociologists. But this perception is not shared unanimously by native Hungarians, who live in the district: due to poverty and controversial public policies in the area, stigma against immigrants and socially vulnerable groups (Roma, homeless) is flourishing.

The Business Plan
If, at the beginning, the new-comers rented property from Hungarians in order to pursue their commercial activities, an increasing number of immigrants in the eighth district become owners of estate hosting shops, barbers, travel agencies, and gyors büfés. That is, commerce is going pretty well in Józsefváros: a Chinese trader from Népszinház Street, who settled in Budapest in 1994, believes that business opportunities in the neighbourhood are great and thus called for two of his siblings to follow him to Budapest. He used to work in the Four Tigers market, but he managed to collect money to open his own shops. Still, the market is the place where he gets his goods from, and he says it is easier for a Chinese to bargain there. He handles basic Hungarian, watches local TV and thinks that ‘the important is what happens here’ (in Hungary, a/n). Another entrepreneur, a Vietnamese owning a travel agency in Orczy Square, gave up a good job opportunity in Germany offered to him after finishing studies, because he found business in Budapest to be ‘more challenging’. Nonetheless, he constantly needs the help of his fiancée, who is also from Vietnam and who came to Budapest in 1993, because unlike him, she speaks Hungarian and can deal with official documentation.

The Labour Market
For some businesses, though, the work is not so successful. A Syrian mechanic, who arrived in Hungary in 2000 and later married a Hungarian woman, had to invest in a second shop just because one store ‘was not enough to make a living’ for his family. He says it is even unnecessary for him to stay at work all day, because there are too few customers: they can call him at the number he wrote on the door, as he lives close to the shop. This technical supply store was opened in addition to a ‘100 Forint’ he bought immediately after he settled in Népszinház Street. A hairdresser from Egypt, who came to Hungary as a refugee at the age of 20, managed to get employed in a fodrász in Orczy Square only with the help of his Arab acquaintances from the neighbourhood, and after going through three temporary jobs. He dreams of opening his own salon, but realizes that he needs more money and has to learn better Hungarian: the shop where he works now is rented by an elder Egyptian man from a Hungarian-speaking Vietnamese.

Multikulturalizmus
The willingness and abilities to integrate within a host society tend to be generalized in terms of the migrants’ origins: Chinese people are usually believed to master a decent level of Hungarian, Arabs – the best, while the Black are regarded as the most closed, obscure communities. After all, it is obviously a matter of personalities. Although he doesn’t speak Hungarian well, the Syrian mechanic says he has more Hungarian friends than Arabs; moreover, his children have Hungarian classmates only. On the other hand, he claims that unlike in Syria, in Hungary people can be aggressive and shout at each other with ugly words. His wife and kids are Muslim, too: they follow Syrian traditions and cook mainly Arab food. The Chinese merchant considers himself Hungarian and he would like to be perceived as such by Hungarians, as well; the Vietnamese businessman believes he is half Hungarian and half Vietnamese: ‘I live in Europe for a long time, so I would think that my heart is Vietnamese, but my head is something different.. In Vietnam we think about democracy and many other things differently than in Europe’. He plans to apply for Hungarian citizenship when he learns the language. The Egyptian young man has been well-received by his wife’s family; he finds Hungarians ‘very nice’, but he keeps his Orthodox religion and regrets that he doesn’t have time to practice it as he had in his motherland. Everybody in our story seems to be in good relationships with native Hungarians, with the exception of an old fellow who always quarrels with his Syrian neighbour: ‘Go your country! What you doing here?’ – ‘Very like communist this man’, thinks the mechanic.

The District
‘If you live here for a long time, then it is even safe’, laughs a Hungarian shop manager from Népszinház Street. He was born and used to live in the district, but moved to Kispest, because of the very poor public safety in the area: Roma youth steal a lot. The man is also very upset that many Chinese and Vietnamese traders don’t pay appropriately the taxes and sell counterfeit products, which damages his business. On the other hand, he isn’t bothered by the Arabs, who have ‘normal prices’: ‘We can compete with each other. He sells cheaper, I try to sell cheaper too’. The most recent change that he observed in Józsefváros is the significant increase in the number of Black people, and what makes him suspicious of them is that nobody seems to know from what do they live. A tailor in the same street is slightly more positive: she says the district became safer and more interesting in the past two decades due to immigrants’ commercial activities unfolding here. Even the Roma changed their behaviour, thanks to the omnipresence of security cameras. But the woman agrees that the Black persons are the most worrisome: she believes they come to Budapest in order to marry Hungarian girls and put a hold on EU citizenship. Other than that, she is convinced that the bad reputation of the district should be ascribed to poverty and homeless shelters, not to the migrants. The older generation of Hungarians appears to be less open-minded, though: a couple of jewellers in Népszinház Street, who have been owning for a long time a watch shop, are outraged by the turmoil caused by immigrants and homeless. They feel hurt that the state is helping them so little after a lifetime of work in Hungary, while migrants have so many benefits. The spouses find Chinese very dirty, and they cannot explain themselves how come that they find jobs when so many Hungarians are unemployed. So, they admit that migrants actually work hard and they respect them, in this sense. Nonetheless, they argue that Hungarian culture should ‘be forced into immigrants somehow’. In their opinion, the Chinese market and the shelters for homeless (e.g. in Dankó Street) have harmed the district to a great extent, but they still like it and because they are old, they don’t plan to move away: ‘Én magyarnak érzem magam és ő is, nem semmiképpen nem hagynám el a hazámat, én tősgyökeres budapesti vagyok!’



Interviews used to illustrate the lives of labour immigrants in Józsefváros have been kindly provided by Boglárka Szalai of TÁRKI Social Research Institute. The image is courtesy of REORIENT - Migrating Architectures.
The article is part of 'Migrants in the Spotlight' Programme, developed by IOM Budapest.