Borders and Identity

Tóth, Ágnes and Vékás, János (2009) Borders and Identity. Hungarian Statistical Review, 87 (SN13). pp. 3-30. ISSN 0039-0690

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Abstract

As a direct result of political, economic and social transformation experienced in Central and Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, over the past decade and a half the phenomenon of international migration – which in the decades of the dictatorial state regimes was either strictly regulated or banned – has once again become commonplace. After the political system change, the opening of Hungary’s borders completely transformed the processes of migration. From being a source country for migration Hungary has become partially a transit country and to a certain extent a host country too, mainly for the ethnic Hungarians from the neighbouring countries. In line with this process another situation has been developed: an increasing number of people settling and living in Hungary consider that their national identity is not tied, or not only tied to a Hungarian identity. Non-Hungarian, or not exclusively Hungarian-identity individuals settling in Hungary are not only increasing the thirteen officially acknowledged minority communities numerically, but they also display far greater minority solidarity than their fellow minorities who have been long established in the country. The vast majority maintain their minority tongue as their native language, unlike the minorities born and brought up in Hungary who, on the whole, only describe themselves as belonging to a particular minority on a subjective basis (nationality or cultural ties). The former groups bring with them cultural and behavioural models which may even differentiate them from their fellow minorities. Based on the results of the 2001 Census, our case study aims to analyse the characteristics of those minority people who were born abroad.

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