The Relevance of the Cross-Border-Student Mobility along the Hungarian-Romanian Border Region

The settlements inhabited by the Hungarian minority in Romania have mixed (with Hungarian and Romanian language) and partly segregated (Hungarian) school network. After the Romanian integration to the European Union and the simplification of border crossing, the Hungarian minority along the Hungarian-Romanian border, a new process appeared: the cross-border commuting of university and secondary school students the two-step migration. This process fills some of the demographic deficit in the Hungarian education network, but, at the same time it is creating hiatus in the Hungarian school network in Romania. This process has a negative effect on the sustainability of minority institutions in the short term, and in the medium term it has a negative effect on the available human resources and limits the development opportunities of the local economy. Over the past four years, we have followed the process of choosing a high school with the help of quantitative and qualitative studies. The results are suitable for exploring the significance and proportion of the process of cross-border two-step migration.