József Böröcz

Contemporary immigration: theoretical perspectives on its determinants and modes of incorporation.

This article reviews conventional theories about different aspects of labor migration: its origins, stability over time, and patterns of migrant settlement. For each of these aspects, we provide alternative explanatory hypotheses derived from the notions of increasing articulation of the international system and the social embeddedness of its various subprocesses, including labor flows. A typology of sources and outcomes of contemporary immigration is presented as an heuristic device to organize the diversity of such movements as described in the empirical literature.

Small leap forward: Emergence of new economic elites

This article provides a glimpse into the formation of the post-state-socialist business elites in Hungary, Poland and Russia. We raise four interrelated questions. 1) What is the extent of the change on the top of business hierarchy? 2) What social groups predominate in the new business elite? 3) What individual characteristics are overrepresented in the new elite? 4) What type of individuals are losing and gaining ground among the elite because of the transformation?

What is the EU

This interpretive article relies on insights from three critical literatures -world-systems analysis, postcolonial studies and, to the extent of an extended simile, the economic sociology of flexible global production -to propose a geo-political understanding of what the European Union (EU) is. The authors begin by interrogating the tendency within much of the current research and commentary on the EU to treat it as a state of sorts. They then outline some mechanisms -pertaining to its internal and external linkage structures -that have enabled the EU to perform successfully in a geo-political context where most of the main actors are states. Finally, drawing on critical insights from the sociology of subcontracted production and distributed organization, the authors suggest ways in which the EU, in its current form, might be thought of beyond the constraints of the current theoretical language of statehood.

Who you know earnings effects of formal and informal social network resources under late state socialism in Hungary, 1986-1987

Although social network assets have been widely studied as mechanisms for social achievement in the capitalist context, they remain largely unexamined under socialist-type systems. This paper addresses that weakness in the literature and tests the usefulness of social network resources in income attainment models in Hungary, 1986-87. It suggests that the formal-informal distinction is a useful basic taxonomy of social network assets. Contrary to the received analytical framework of state socialist economies - which associates formality with the state sector and informality with the second economy - it treats formal and informal ties as present in both the state and non-state sectors. Regression models of social survey data show that social network resources are a positive contributor to income inequality in both the state and non-state sectors. Formal and informal network ties are shown to have independent and unequal returns, suggesting that they are different types of ties rather than poles in a spectrum.

Hungary as a destination 1960–1984

Abstract This study examines the effects of macrostructural determinants on the choice of Hungary as a destination during the 1960–1984 period. It uses annual international tourist arrival and tourist-night data. General exit visa restrictions make a strong negative impact, while administrative constraints on travel to the West by some socialist states increase the likelihood of travel to Hungary. The analysis confirms that the home countrys world-system position and military-political bloc affiliation simultaneously affect the direction of tourist flows. It also indicates that “behind” contemporary effects, there exists a layer of essentially invariant regional-historical flow patterns: East-Central European origins increase the propensity to participate in international tourism in Hungary.

Travel-capitalism: the structure of Europe and the advent of the tourist.

In one of the twenty lines it allocates to a description of Hungary, the nearly 300-page edition in 1877 of A Satchel Guide for the Vacation Tourist in Europe summarizes the architectural and aesthetic worth of the countrys capital city for sightseeing American visitors by pronouncing that, in Budapest, “the churches and the public buildings are of no particular interest” (Satchel 1877:194). Twenty years later, the 1897 edition of that same guidebook takes a more amiable but scarcely enthusiastic pitch, allowing that “some of the new public buildings are elegant in their way” (Satchel 1897:184). Twenty-seven years later—following a world war, two revolutions, and a foreign military occupation resulting in the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy—the presence of what has remained of Hungary is noted by an increase to eighty-one lines (Satchel 1924). Except for a one-sentence reference to a Danubian steamboat trip downstream from Pressburg (Bratislava, Pozsony), the entire description remains restricted to Budapest. Nearly two generations after the pronouncement of the disparaging opinion above, the 1924 text notices that Budapests “picture at sunset is one of the most striking in Europe” (Satchel 1924:272) and that “it is not only the most considerable city of Hungary, but is probably to be numbered among the four most beautiful capitals of Europe” (1924:273).

Stand Reconstructed: Contingent Closure and Institutional Change

The process is traced whereby crucially important, multiple denotations of classical sociologys key notion referring to social position—the Weberian German concept of Stand—have been stripped to create a simplified and inaccurate representation of social inequalities. Some historical material from central Europe is surveyed, with a brief look at Japan, to demonstrate validity problems created by blanket application of the culturally specific, streamlined notions of status/class. As an alternative, a notion of contingent social closure argues that relaxing the modernizationist assumptions of a single transition from estate to status/class increases the comparative-historical sensitivity of research on social structure, inequality, and stratification. A dynamic reading of Polányi suggests a reconceptualization of institutions as the “raw material” of social change. This might help to avoid the outdated contrast of the “West” vs. its “Others.”

Informality and Nonprofits in East Central European Capitalism

This paper presents an analysis of nonprofit organizations—the organizational infrastructure of civil society—in East Central Europe, from one important respect: by placing them in the context of the comparative historical sociology of the regions widespread informality. This involves two steps: (1) summarizing an argument about the role of informality in East Central European capitalism today in order to (2) outline its implications for the study of post-state-socialist nonprofits. Most of the empirical examples come from Hungary. These examples serve illustrative purposes and are intended as devices to provoke new analysis. They are meant to open, rather than close, discussion.

Social change with sticky features and the failures of modernizationism

Abstract The paper dismisses four ‘western’ models of history and social change, namely progress, rupture, time‐series, and palette. It is argued that none of the four models provides conceptual tools for analysing the historical process as both continuity and change. Increasing the number of analytical components does likewise not provide better results. Instead what is needed is an analytical instrument that captures the complexity of novel constellations of ‘old’ and ‘new ‘ components, beyond simple admixtures.

Vanguard of the Construction of Capitalism? The Hungarian Intellectuals' Trip to Power

indirect forms of social pressure. The fact that Hungary’s &dquo;exit&dquo; from the political system of state socialism has been remarkably peaceful has much to do with the Kadarist hermitage a combination of arbitrarily imposed rules and regulations with arbitrary and unpredictable compromises concerning their enforcement. For lack of an alternative political apparatus, the power and administrative vacuum created after the disintegration of the ruling order has pulled in various groups of intellectuals into positions of control over the state. These groups had been constituted on the basis of extended social networks of friends and colleagues (sometimes