Over the past few decades, the forms and geographies of international retirement migration have diversified globally. An outstanding example of this is Hungary, a destination for both retirement migrants from Western Europe and older people, mainly ethnic Hungarian migrants from neighbouring regions. While an increasing body of literature deals with the spatiality of international retirement migration, only a few studies have analysed the settlement choices of older immigrants in receiving countries. To fill this gap, our paper presents a multi-level analysis of the spatial characteristics of the older adults who are settling in Hungary. We examine two different groups of older people arriving in Hungary to identify the factors that may influence their choice of place of residence and explain the possible reasons for their mobility. The empirical data pertain to German and Ukrainian individuals aged over 60, whose migration choices, because their places of residence are characterised by remarkably different geographical patterns, can be considered distinct. Based on a multivariate statistical analysis of the size and distribution of German and Ukrainian migrants aged 60 and over, we found that only some of the German older adults arrive in Hungary as ‘classic’ lifestyle migrants. However, many of them live in urban areas or disadvantaged regions. In contrast, older persons from Ukraine, primarily ethnic Hungarians, are concentrated along the Ukrainian border or choose to reside in urban municipalities located farther from the border. Data suggest that retired people arriving in Hungary are driven mainly by economic strategies, which, in our view, can be identified as different forms of geoarbitrage, namely, higher pension-seeking among Ukrainians and escaping relative deprivation among Germans. The increasing number of older migrants entails new challenges at the local level, requiring municipalities to expand social services, underscoring the political relevance of our findings.

While a wide range of community‐based civic initiatives and collective practices have emerged in urban settings in recent years, the intersection of spatiality, care, and communities is a relatively little‐discussed topic. In the examination of urban life, the concept of social infrastructures may be a useful tool, that refers to spaces, facilities, institutions, and communities that enable social connections in the urban environment and contributes to the operation of the city with regards to well‐being, inclusiveness, autonomy, accessibility, and mobility for potentially vulnerable social groups like older people. The article applies the concept as a starting point and presents three case studies of caring communities in Austria, Hungary, and the Netherlands. Caring communities are thereby understood as heterogeneous and dynamic ensembles of caring relations involving different actors, practices, and socio‐material dimensions. Drawing on theoretical and empirical work that critically assesses care, caring communities and urban life, we ask the following questions: (a) How are the analysed cases embedded into the respective (country‐specific and local) care regimes?; (b) how do community initiatives (re‐)appropriate urban spaces?; and (c) how do community initiatives implement new urban cultures of care and constitute social infrastructures? By analysing distinct care regimes, we first examine specific characteristics of the socio‐spatial embedding of caring communities in urban regions. Building on qualitative research, in the second step, we present different attempts at organising community‐based care in the three selected countries.

In neoliberal capitalism, care has become increasingly marketised. In Europe, states have been withdrawing from their care responsibilities and outsourcing them to families, the market, and other actors. These trends also result in the transformation of what good care means and how it is provided. In Hungary, the care regime for older people follows unsupported familialistic policies. The care gap is filled by families, who are responsible for senior care—while as an alternative, a number of civic initiatives and informal solutions have emerged. This paper analyses cases of caring communities, which are interpreted as a set of dynamic relations in which the community’s role in providing care is constantly negotiated. With a focus on rural settlements, the study raises three questions: What does good care mean, and how is it achieved? Under what institutional and social conditions do the caring communities under consideration operate? What is the relation between state, market, and civil society in these communities? Three cases are presented, each from Southern Transdanubia, Hungary. The results demonstrate that community-based initiatives in rural Hungary are closely linked to local governments, with both mutually relying on each others’ resources. Yet even though the shortcomings of the existing care regime induce a growing need for civic activity and caring communities, the idea of market-based care solutions is part of the latters’ visions as well.

Precarious working conditions, low pay, and limited access to labor and social rights characterize market‐based home care globally. Alongside growing concerns about the exploitation of carers, calls for the professionalization of the sector have also intensified. However, qualifications and training in market‐based care services remain only loosely regulated. Drawing on Ortiga et al.’s (2021) concept of skill regimes and the literature on skills and professionalism in care, this article examines how a segmented informal care market shapes the construction of skills considered necessary for providing good care, and to what extent training initiatives support professionalization. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with care workers, family members, intermediaries, and training providers, as well as ethnographic fieldwork conducted through online and in‐person training programs. The findings show that the strong underregulation of the home care market has hindered the emergence of widely accepted professional standards, while similarly underregulated training programs often fail to support professional competency development and instead undermine the value of formal qualifications. The Hungarian case thus illustrates how a loosely regulated skill regime can contribute to both deprofessionalization and market segmentation.

This article examines the development and impact of caring communities in a Hungarian town, situating the analysis within debates about the neoliberal restructuring of care and the authoritarian neoliberal state of Hungary. Drawing on Joan Tronto’s ethics of care and various conceptualizations of caring communities as spaces of critical reflection and civic engagement, we investigate how civil society organizations act as facilitators and organizers of the local care landscape. Our empirical focus is a mid‐sized urban center in southern Hungary, where demographic aging, shrinking welfare capacities, and a diverse social environment shape potential stakeholder cooperation. Based on qualitative research methods, including participatory fieldwork, semi‐structured interviews, and focus groups, we analyze how local civil society organizations negotiate their roles in relation to municipal actors and other stakeholders, and the political impact they achieve on local governance through their work. The findings highlight both the potential and the limits of community‐based initiatives: A shift can be observed at the municipal level, where concepts such as conscious aging and empowerment are increasingly recognized. However, civil society organizations are not able to fully prevent the reproduction of existing inequalities, and the participation of older adults remains limited.