Precarious and Meaningful Work: Young Hungarians’ Intentions to Work Abroad

Freedom of movement enables young Europeans to pursue work across borders. An intention to work abroad may nevertheless also represent a potential “transnational exit” when domestic employment does not offer sufficiently predictable conditions, effective rights, or credible worker voice. This socio-legal article combines a cross-sectional survey of Hungarians aged 18–30 with doctrinal and institutional analysis of EU and Hungarian labour law. The survey yielded 265 usable responses; analyses of work-related variables used the employed subsample (N = 146). Meaningful work was negatively associated with personal intention to work abroad. Overall precariousness had no statistically significant direct association with that intention, but it was associated with a more positive general attitude towards foreign work and showed an indirect association with intention through lower meaningfulness. At high levels of meaningful work, the precariousness-intention association was positive and statistically significant. The findings support a retention policy that respects free movement while making staying a genuine choice through enforceable rights, effective inspection, protection against retaliation, and accessible collective voice.