Where do 100.000 szekler emigrants live around the world?

Dénes Csala, a szekler data scientist, analysed Facebook data and came to the conclusion that one can meet szeklers all around the world. He also concluded which cities are the victims of most severe migration.

According to mno.hu, he collected data from Facebook, checked the current location of people whose place of birth was a region in Szeklerland. He got 61 789 hits of the sixteen biggest cities of Szeklerland. If they analysed the migrants in the rate of the population of the cities, they would find that the fourth or fifth of the population of some cities had wandered away. The migration rate is 31% at Balabánya, 22% at Barót and 21% at Székelykeresztúr. Lastly, the scientist geocoded the data and created the migration map of the cities of Szeklerland.

It shows that the szeklers are everywhere; everywhere from Greenland to Tahiti, from Madagascar to Siberia. Though, beyond Europe and the USA, the diaspora is quite disorganised. “In Asia (without the Near East) ~50, in South America ~30, in Australia and Africa 10 fellow countrymen live. In the Near East ~100 live, more exactly 30 in both Cyprus and Israel, 16 in Iraq and 17 in the United Arab Emirates.” – wrote Dénes Csala in his post on his blog, Székelydata.

North America is a bit more populated with its szekler population counting ~200 habitants. They mostly live on the East Coast, in Canada and Mexico. It’s interesting that the sixteen szekler cities are present in the USA almost proportionately to their population.

Europe is the main target which is not surprising with its geographic and cultural proximity. Naturally, most emigrants choose Hungary and it is followed by Germany, The United Kingdom, Italy and Austria. It’s intriguing that the 2/3 of the migrants in Italy is from Maroshévíz and Balabánya. This is due to people wandering to places where they have acquaintances rather than to unknown places. Balabánya is arresting because its migrants went to the most diverse places out of all cities.

The scientist adds that the szeklers settled in many different cities of Hungary while in other countries they are concentrated in one city. “Less people move to the states of the former Soviet Union than to Africa; but more and more people move to the Canary Islands.” – writes Dénes Csala, who also showed that around 97.000 szekler habitants live abroad. He added: his analysation of Facebook data can be deceiving because the demography of Facebook users doesn’t do justice to the real szekler demography.

The scientist himself has lived abroad, in Abu-Dhabi and the USA as a student. He said to Hargita Népe that he would return there after his doctoral studies. He thinks that leaving isn’t easy but returning is harder. While he studies abroad his mates back at home build up a strong relationship network and find their way in the red tape. He added that Zoltán Néda and Albert László Barabási did a similar research in the last 5-10 years but the data hunting in media wasn’t that developed then.

At Székelydata he also mentioned the research possibilities lying in his method. “Concerning the processing of data this is a real gold mine; in a future post we’re going to check what field of work they are in, what kind of education background they have and whether or not this two can be related.”

Look out for that!

Translated by Alexandra Béni

Source: mno.hu