Abstract: Foreign citizens began to immigrate to Hungary following its democratic transformation. Ethnicity had a decisive role during this period: mostly people with Hungarian nationality arrived. Later, following Hungary’s accession to the European Union, global trends had an impact on the Hungarian migration networks: Hungary’s migratory source extended, and it was able to attract foreign citizens from greater distances.Thus, two levels of international migration to Hungary are markedly separated: the impact of global migration and the movements from the countries of the Carpathian Basin to Hungary. Within Europe, the primary weight of neighbouring countries is linked to cross-border linguistic and culture relations. International migration to Hungary is characterised by short distances, and the majority of the immigrant population has Hungarian nationality or is native speaker of Hungarian.Most immigrants to Hungary are arriving from Romania, so the aim of the article is to analyse the social, economic and demographic characteristics of the migrants according to their areas of birth.Migration flows between the two countries have been territorially concentrated; one quarter of the movements between 2011 and 2017 took place between Central Hungary and the Central Romanian Development Region. In the choice of the new place of residence, in addition to the economic centre areas border regions also play an important role, which can partly be explained by the phenomenon of circular migration, and partly by the easier interaction with those family members who have remained home.