How to Succeed in a Transnational Labor Market: Job Search and Wages among Hungarian,Slovak, and Czech Commuters in Austria

This paper deals with job search strategies and wages among cross‐border commuters residing in the Central European Region (CENTROPE). Our main aim is to investigate the role of social networks as constitutive for job searching and for successful labor market integration. We build upon a theoretical framework developed by Aguilera and Massey, reflecting on the nexus of social networks, job search methods, and related labor market outcomes. Methodologically, we use a new quantitative survey on the employment careers of cross‐border commuters residing in the regions of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary bordering on Austria, conducted in the winter/spring of 2012/2013 (N = 2,573). Our results corroborate the hypothesis that human and social capital resources as well as labor market characteristics serve as key factors for job search and labor market integration among cross‐border commuters in the CENTROPE transnational labor market.