Thinking citizenship through the lived experiences of highly skilled migrants in Budapest

Abstract

This study aims to understand and explain the concept of citizenship by analyzing the lived experiences of highly skilled migrants, reflecting on their everyday transnational lives in the urban setting of Budapest. Based on discourse analysis of 30 semi-structured interviews conducted in Budapest in the fall of 2022, the research thinks through lived citizenship experiences to explore how and why these experiences matter for understanding subjective citizenship. This study suggests that the concept of lived citizenship embodies a complex narrative of everyday socio-economic, socio-cultural, and emotional experiences that go beyond what the legal status depicts. Citizenship experiences of highly skilled migrants involve a process of negotiating cultural and moral cosmopolitanism with constructive patriotism in everyday lives in the urban context. The research broadens the thinking on the foundation, manifestations, and operationalization of lived citizenship as experiences of belonging and coexistence, presenting a unique contribution to the production of knowledge about highly skilled migration in Hungary. This article proposes that citizenship entails complex relational dimensions and involves a life-long learning process with continual meaning-making through life experiences that transcends the consequences of individuals' legal status within a given nation-state.