Public Health Concerns Regarding Reproduction Structured by Race/ Ethnicity and Class during State Socialism in Hungary

Szamosi, Barna (2019) Public Health Concerns Regarding Reproduction Structured by Race/ Ethnicity and Class during State Socialism in Hungary. Pro&Contra, 3 (1). pp. 47-66. ISSN 2630-8916

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Abstract

This paper describes the means by which medical professionals of the socialist period integrated interwar public hygiene practices into the health management of gypsies from the perspective of the public health interest of the majority. In these practices, ethnic/racial stereotypes shaped public health action. Public-health officials justified these actions on the basis of their fear that gypsies would spread diseases if their hygiene issues were not controlled. A further development occurred in the discourse when gypsy ethnic identity came to be recognized as an important statistical variable in determining healthy birth rates. Regarding this question, it will be demonstrated that ethnic identity as a variable, appeared in the medical discourse as a problem that offset the overall reproductive statistics of the state. It is argued that the medical professional discourse with its arguments, practices, and measures, point towards a continuity between the interwar and socialist periods’ public health regarding racial thinking.

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