The new demography of Central European cities

Central European cities are changing. This is not a controversial statement — it is simply a demographic fact, and the data is available to anyone who wants to look at it. What is contested, and what I want to examine here, is what the data actually shows, as opposed to what various interested parties claim it shows.

Let me begin with Budapest, because it is the case I know best. The city's population has been growing since 2010, after two decades of decline. The growth is not, primarily, the result of immigration from outside the EU — Hungary has relatively low levels of such immigration compared to most Western European countries. It is the result of internal migration (younger Hungarians moving to the capital from smaller towns and cities) and, to a lesser extent, of migration from neighbouring countries with large Hungarian minorities.

Warsaw tells a different story. Poland's capital has seen substantial immigration, primarily from Ukraine, which accelerated dramatically after 2014 and again after 2022. The Ukrainian community in Warsaw is now the largest immigrant community in any Central European city by a significant margin. This has had visible effects on the city's economic life, its housing market, and — more quietly, more slowly — its social texture.

Prague occupies a middle position. Immigration has been significant, though not as dramatic as in Warsaw; it has come from a wider range of origins; and it has been met with a wider range of public responses, from genuine integration efforts to the kind of low-level hostility that does not make headlines but shapes daily life.