The Silent Exodus of Eastern European Social Work

Why wage increases alone will not bring social care professionals home

Over the past few years, the idea of returning home has occurred to me more and more often. Not out of nostalgia, and not because of some romantic sense of homesickness. Rather, because I genuinely wanted to believe that one day Hungary might also need the knowledge, professional perspective and practical experience I have gained abroad over the past decade.

Author: Olga Nádra

For the first time in ten years, I felt there might truly be a chance for a country to emerge where returning home as a professional would make sense. For many of us, the promise of a change of government was not simply a political question. For me, it meant hope. Hope that real, systemic changes could finally take place in the social sector. That social work would no longer be treated as invisible background labour, but as a profession of genuine social importance. That an independent ministry for social affairs could be created, one that operates on professional grounds and does not treat the sector merely as a tool of political communication.

When I heard about calling Hungarian professionals working abroad back home, about wage adjustments and even a possible 25 percent salary increase, I felt real motivation for the first time in a long while to seriously consider moving back. Not because life in Western Europe cannot be more predictable. But because, at some point, a person wants to feel that they are needed at home too. That their knowledge, experience and professional outlook, built up over many years, might one day also become valuable in Hungary.

What I perhaps liked most about the new political approach was that, for the first time in a long while, it felt as if people’s opinions mattered. It did not seem as though everything was being decided solely through pre-arranged names, backroom deals and closed political logic. It felt as if society could also have a say in who receives trust and who represents the country or certain policy areas. For many of us, this alone was a new experience. It gave us the feeling that perhaps we are not merely passive subjects of decisions, but could also become shapers of the future.

This is why I followed the transformation of the social sector and the establishment of the new ministry with particular anticipation. I was genuinely pleased that Dr Vilmos Kátai-Németh was appointed to lead the social and family affairs portfolio. Some may have been surprised that a lawyer would lead this field, but I considered it a particularly good decision. Who could more effectively represent the interests of a long-undervalued sector than someone who understands the mechanisms of legislation, institutions and state administration? In a field where genuine advocacy has been missing for decades, this seemed to me a strong and encouraging message.

I felt similarly about Szilvia Gyurkó’s role in the field of child protection. There are few professionals in Hungary today whose name, face and credibility are so closely associated with child protection. For decades, we have seen her work, her professional commitment, her conflicts and the consistency with which she has represented the interests of children, even when doing so was neither comfortable, popular nor politically convenient. To me, this role suggested that real professional authority might finally be placed in decision-making positions.

That was when I truly began to feel enthusiastic. I felt that perhaps, for the first time, real professional representation could be given to those social groups that have remained almost invisible in public policy for decades. The very people I have worked with. Psychiatric patients. Homeless people. Older people in care. Widows and elderly people left alone. Family members caring for relatives at home. People with disabilities. Burned-out social workers. Professionals who have left the country. And perhaps finally also those women who are trying to cope with invisible illnesses, menopause, endometriosis or the burdens of the sandwich generation while trying to remain present both in the labour market and in their families.

I felt that perhaps a professionally grounded transformation of social policy could finally begin.

In recent days, however, new names have been presented, and I admit honestly: I had not known any of them before. That in itself is, of course, not a problem. A good professional does not become credible simply by being known to the public. Many excellent people have worked quietly, invisibly, for decades, far away from any spotlight. For me, therefore, the question was not public visibility, but professional background. How much time have they truly spent in the field? Have they worked among people, in crises, in institutions, in care systems? Do they have their own empirical experience of the reality about which they will have to make decisions?

Because I am personally convinced that social work is, above all, fieldwork. It is the direct experience of people, life situations, losses, mental breakdowns, family crises, addictions, loneliness in old age and social vulnerability. It is a profession whose foundations are not built primarily in offices, conference rooms or policy panels, but in human presence.

Of course, a care system cannot function safely without legal, financial and quality assurance frameworks. Without them, there is no predictability, no accountability and no institutional stability. But the profession itself is born in the field. Where decisions affect real human lives. Where one does not encounter strategy papers, but crying family members, collapsing service users, exhausted colleagues and impossible situations.

This is why I believe it is especially important that those who come to lead social policy should not have only administrative, academic or political experience, but also a genuine connection to the everyday reality of the field. It is not enough to speak about the system. One also has to see how it works. Or how it fails to work.

I am forty-three years old. Over the past ten years, I have gained a great deal of professional experience abroad, and my thinking has changed profoundly about how a social care system could operate in a more humane way. And I am not alone in this.

Tens of thousands of Eastern European professionals are currently working across Europe in home care, residential institutions, psychiatric care, disability services or outpatient support systems. We did not leave our countries out of a thirst for adventure. Many of us left because, after a while, the system in which we worked became unsustainable not only financially, but also humanly and professionally.

Over the past years, however, we have not only gained experience. We have also acquired a new professional perspective. Many of us work in innovative forms of care, community-based models and modern service systems that either do not yet exist at home or exist only in a very limited way. This has not only policy significance, but very concrete human consequences.

Because where such services are missing, people remain without support. Or they remain in a kind of suspended state. Not ill enough to be hospitalised, but not stable enough to live independently without real support. Families are often left entirely alone, while the system responds only at the very end, when a crisis has already developed. When everyone is already exhausted. When helping has become much more difficult.

This is why the question of returning home is far more complex for us than the size of a salary. Wage adjustment is important. In fact, it is essential. But on its own, it is not enough.

What is needed is not only higher pay, but professional change. Systemic and cultural change. A working culture in which the social worker is not a burned-out executor, but a partner. A culture where there is professional autonomy, human communication, further training, mental health support and genuine social recognition.

Many of us did not simply leave behind a lower-paid job. We left behind a mode of operation that, in the long run, wore people down physically and mentally. This is why a salary increase alone is no guarantee that professionals working abroad will return home in large numbers. It is difficult to step back into the same conditions that once forced us to leave.

And this is where the real pain begins. Because many of us would like to believe that there is a way back. That one day we will return not only as guests, not only as visitors, not only for Christmas or for the summer, but also as professionals. As people who have a place, a task and a value at home.

But after the age of forty, one thinks about starting over differently. After building a professional life, experience and existence abroad, moving home is not simply a change of address. It is an entire life-strategy decision. And there comes a point when a person begins to face the fact that time is not infinite.

It may slowly become too late for someone to return home and rebuild their professional path, network, credibility and livelihood from zero. Especially in a profession where the risk of burnout is already high, and where many have already been working under physical and mental overload for years.

Moreover, we tend to speak about returning home as if it were purely a professional or individual decision. As if a social care professional working abroad could simply decide from one day to the next to move back. But after ten years, one no longer lives with the consequences of one’s decisions alone.

Behind us there are families. Spouses who have also built their own lives. Children who have grown up in another education system, socialised in another language, and often belong to several cultures at once. For them, moving back is not a romantic “return home”. It may also mean a profound loss of identity and security.

Yet somehow, we speak very little about this.

In reality, returning home is not the decision of one person. It is the decision of an entire family.

Perhaps this is why so many of us are watching what is happening in Hungary with such tension. Because for us, this is no longer merely a political issue. It is deeply personal. It is a possible path to one day bring home the knowledge, experience and professional perspective we have gained abroad over the past decade.

But time is passing.

And while a country is right to expect its professionals working abroad to return, perhaps it should also recognise something else: returning home requires more than promises. More than wage increases. More than beautiful sentences about how much we are needed. It requires real professional trust. Modern systems. Human institutional functioning. A professional culture to which one can return not with fear, but with hope. Because after a while, the question will no longer be whether we would like to go home. But whether there will still be a realistic possibility to start a new life there.

Cover photo credit: CEA Magazine. Edited with AI assistance using ChatGPT

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