ABSTRACT
Catalysed by economic reforms and the liberalization of travel and border regimes as well as by spreading ethnic conflict, immigration to the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe gradually picked up and became more diversified in the years preceding the collapse of state socialism. Nonetheless, the massive waves of forced and voluntary ethnic migrations within the region, of labour migration from east to west and of ‘shuttle traders’ after the end of the anciens régimes caught both their successors and Western neighbours unprepared. The Chinese, largely in the latter category, became one of the largest, fastest-growing, most important, and most mobile migrant groups in the region. Russia and Hungary emerged as the main hubs of this new Chinese migration.
