Monika Mária Váradi

The Uneven Development of Suburbanization during Transition in Hungary

This paper considers how far suburbanization in Hungary has followed the Western model. The authors argue that the transition period, as a distinctive era, will not bring about fundamental changes in the cause-and-effect relationships of surburban development. The decisive role of capital in Hungarian suburbanization is evident in the uneven development of this spatial process. It is contended that the actors in the suburbanization of transition, although labelled ‘distinctive’ by some commentators, do not have a trajectory which is essentially different from that of their western counterparts. Differences arise from the means and pace of acquiring property and capital. As in advanced capitalism, suburbanization in Hungary results in social tensions, segregation and exclusion.

Workfare Schemes as a Tool For Preventing the Further Impoverishment of the Rural Poor

Abstract This article examines workfare schemes in rural Hungary and their contribution to relieving rural poverty. It does so on the basis of an analysis of European Union statistics and a series of semi-structured interviews which were conducted in 2013-2015 as part of a larger project investigating the contemporary state of rural Hungary. The paper comprises four sections: following a short description of the methodology, regional disparities and deprivation in rural areas are introduced with the help of a typology on deprivation and Eurostat data, thus providing evidence for European comparison. Following this, the main findings of our extensive qualitative research into workfare policies in rural Hungary are introduced and discussed on the basis of related legislation4. The article finds that workfare schemes in the rural sector are unique to Central and Eastern Europe, and are especially favoured in Hungary; it also discovers that economists are correct in assessing that said workfare schemes create few new jobs. Nevertheless, they are ‘better than nothing’, and have become embedded in rural society, where they are appreciated by beneficiaries and local officials alike. They necessarily make a paternalistic distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor, and the more commercially-oriented schemes raise issues of market distortion.

„Kulturálisan vagyunk magyarok, mentalitásban szerbek vagyunk szerintem, igen.” Magyarországon élő vajdasági magyar migránsok és a jugóbuli

During our fieldwork we found that a great number of ethnic Hungarians who resettled from Vojvodina go to so-called Balkan or Yugo parties in Budapest. This led to questions about what these public occasions mean for the Vojvodinian Hungarians and how they connect to the memory and commemoration of Yugoslavia. Based on this interest, the research has been enlarged: direct questions regarding the Yugo parties were incorporated into the interviews and participatory observation data about five Yugo parties contribute to deeper insight. Yugo parties have been organised in Budapest five times a year since 2002. The primary goal of Yugo parties was to serve as a place and occasion for Vojvodinian Hungarian migrants to meet, to be together, to party. The Yugo party is a “Southern” festivity. “Southern” is understood here as pulsating rhythm, the kolo (circle dance), abandon partying till morning, the foods and the special quality of a feeling of togetherness. The welcoming community atmosphere contributes to the fact that today Yugo parties attract a wider circle of participants, not only the prime target group, i.e. the Hungarians from Vojvodina. Now youngsters who were born in the nineties and came to Hungary to attend high school or university and do not have personal memories of Yugoslavia also go to these parties; in addition, people who travel to Budapest especially for such events from the ex-Yugoslav area; foreigners from different countries, and Hungarians from Hungary. During the interviews, the notion of “nostalgia” often emerged. With the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the strengthening nationalism in the successor states has attempted to sharply distance themselves from the other former constituent six socialist republics of Yugoslavia by emphasizing their ethnic, linguistic, religious and economic differences. At the same time Yugoslavia was described as a failed and artificial state which only tried to supress the birth of independent successor states. Nevertheless in the 1990s, a “Yugonostalgia” emerged. Most research projects primarily study and analyse the content, subject and phenomena of Yugonostalgia in the successor states. According to some researchers, restorative Yugonostalgia has to be distinguished from reflexive Yugonostalgia. Restorative nostalgia can be characterised as the longing for fantasies of an idealised Yugoslav past. In contrast, reflexive Yugonostalgia should rather be interpreted in a political context and can be seen as a reaction to both the destructive forces of nationalist nostalgia and Yugonostalgia as a pejorative marker in the contemporary discourse about former Yugoslavia. Comparing the analyses about Yugonostalgia in the successor states we can identify both some common points and some deviations. The most obvious difference is the absolute lack of a political context or political interests. The other main item of Yugonostalgia, the Tito cult is not present at all in the case of Vojvodinian migrants. The Vojvodinian Hungarians have not participated in either discourse about Yugonostalgia, or in the typical Yugonostalgic manifestations. If nostalgia arises from the desire to sustain the continuity of memory, in case of the Vojvodinian Hungarian migrant community the Yugo party is not only the scene to remember their youth, but it also offers a possibility to live together the continuity of one’s individual walk of life – in most cases broken by involuntary migration (forced by the war and its consequences). Above all, we understand the importance of Yugo parties in Budapest in recreating and strengthening a special identity, which differentiates the Vojvodinian Hungarians from the Hungarians in Hungary.

Bevezető: utak és úton lévők

A kvalitativ modszerekkel nyert kutatasi eredmenyeink ertelmezese soran a transznacionalis ter, a transznacionalis es az etnikai migracio elmeleti es szemleleti kereteit egyarant figyelembe vettuk. Az altalunk vizsgalt migracios folyamatok transznacionalis terben zajlanak, es a transznacionalis irodalomban leirt migrans elethelyzetek, gyakorlatok – kulonboző nemzetallamokban elhelyezkedő lokalitasokhoz valo egyidejű, bar elterő intenzitasu kotődes, kapcsolatok – tobb peldajaval is talalkoztunk. Ludger Pries nyoman a transznacionalis migraciot es a transznacionalis migrans alakjat olyan idealtipusnak tekintettuk, amelyhez az egyes migrans utak es helyzetek csupan kozelitenek, es empirikus eredmenyeink alapjan azt mondhatjuk, hogy a valoban plurilokalis, vagyis a ket helyhez valo egyidejű, intenziv es tartos kotődes s az ehhez kapcsolodo gyakorlatok csupan a migransok kisebbseget, illetve a migracios eletpalyak egy-egy szakaszat jellemzik. A vizsgalt migracios folyamatokban az etnicitas strukturalis tenyezőkent es a migrans tapasztalatok ertelmezesi keretekent egyarant perdontő szerepet jatszik. Az etnikai migracio szakirodalomban targyalt mindharom magyarazo modellje – az anyaorszagba valo hazateres, a gazdasagi okokbol valo, illetve a kisebbsegi letben elszenvedett serelmek altal osztonzott migracio – alkalmas a migraciot kivalto es mozgato okok elemzesere, a migrans narrativak ertelmezesere, azt azonban nem allithatjuk, hogy barmelyikuk kizarolagos ervenyre tehet szert. Mas kutatokhoz hasonloan Rogers Brubaker meghatarozasat tartjuk a leginkabb gyumolcsozőnek, aki az etnikai migracio tag ertelmezeset hasznalva minden olyan vandorlasi folyamatot etnikai migracionak tekint, amelyben az etnicitas kulturalis es szimbolikus tőkekent szabalyozo szerepet jatszik. This special issue of Ter es Tarsadalom presents some results of an international research project carried out by researchers from Switzerland, Hungary and Serbia between 2010 and 2012. The topic of the research was “Integrating (Trans-)national Migrants in Transition States” (TRANSMIG) and was financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). The research aimed to explore and interpret migration flows from the Vojvodina (Serbia) to Hungary and from ex-Yugoslav republics to the Vojvodina. In the first period of the last twenty years, wars which contributed to the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the formation of new national states have caused migration flows. After the change of the millennium, educational migration of Vojvodina Hungarian youth can be considered the most important migratory movement from the Vojvodina to Hungary. Labour (economic) migration also occurs, but this cannot be understood as a one-way movement, since in the Hungarian–Serbian border zone migrants from the Vojvodina who already resettled to Hungary commute to the Vojvodina. While interpreting the qualitative research data the theoretical frameworks and approaches of transnational space, transnationalism and ethnic migration were taken into consideration. The migration movement in question occurs in a transnational social space where migrants are in constant motion. By their movements and actions that space is continually recreated. With Ludger Pries we see a transnational migrant as an ideal type to whom individual migratory movements and positions only approximate. Based on our empirical results we can conclude that real pluri-local, intensive and long-lasting bonding to two places at the same time and the relating practices only characterise a minority of migrants and certain sections of migratory careers. In the migration processes studied, ethnicity as a term is needed as a “structural factor” and frame of interpretation to approach migrant experiences. All three explanatory models for ethnic migration – return migration, economic migration, migration motivated by grievances suffered in a minority situation – are suitable to analyse the reasons that initiated migration and kept it in motion. They are helpful in interpreting migrant narratives. However, none of the reasons can claim exclusive validity. Agreeing with other researchers, we find Roger Brubaker’s definition the most useful: Ethnic migration should be comprehended in a broad sense. In addition, every migration can be considered as “ethnically” motivated where ethnicity plays a dominant role as a cultural and symbolic capital.

Einführung der Herausgeber

Nie ist es einfach, ein vielschichtiges akademisches Lebenswerk in prägnante Formeln und griffige Titel zu bringen. Dennoch gab es große Einigkeit in der Gruppe der Herausgeber dieser Festschrift zum persönlichen Jubiläum von Univ.-Prof. Doris Wastl-Walter, dass der Ansatz des Überwindens von Grenzen – in manchen Momenten geradezu eine Abscheu vor engstirnigem Denken – ein lebenslanges Lebensprinzip war und ist. Das Motiv von „Grenzüberschreitenden Nachbarschaften“ erschien uns daher als die entsprechende Themenstellung.

Tanulmányi célú migráció, migráns élethelyzetek: vajdasági diákok Magyarországon

Educational migration is considered to be one of the most significant types of migration from Serbia to Hungary. During the last twenty years, many Hungarian families in the Vojvodina (the northern region of Serbia) have decided that after finishing primary school in Serbia, their children should pursue their secondary and tertiary education in Hungary. The present study analyses empirical data and aims to present the features of educational migration across the Serbian–Hungarian border. We define cross-border educational migration as a form of transnational migration, although the specificity of this migration is that migrants who are ethnic Hungarians move to a country which many of them considers as their mother country. The two-decades-old transnational educational migration at the Hungarian–Serbian border is a process determined by both ethnic and economic factors, and concerns primarily minority communities with Hungarian ethnic background on the Serbian side of the border. Previous research has shown, and we have also confirmed, that Hungarian national policy with its associated instruments is unable to fulfil its most important purpose, which is to safeguard the existence of an intellectual elite in Hungarian minority communities and to help them sustain an adequate livelihood in their country of birth. The analysis of migrants’ biographies have revealed the permanent push and pull factors and transmigrant networks, which not only foster educational migration but make it a supported, legitimate individual and family strategy as well. The educational form of transnational migration is characterised by migrants being linked to two worlds simultaneously, though the connection differs according to individual circumstances, and its intensity changes over time. Although the outcome of such transnational migration is considered to be open, our research indicates that in the majority of cases, it is the first step towards permanently leaving behind the country of birth. Thus strategies and decisions concerning children’s education are at the same time long-term migratory decisions and strategies.

Austrian-Hungarian Environmental Conflict: Struggling for Political Participation in the Borderland

The Austrian–Hungarian–Slovenian triple border area, which has traditionally been characterised by good neighbourhood relations, has become the scene of a serious environmental conflict in recent years. This conflict has evolved in the triple border area, but it is Hungarian and Austrian settlements, particularly the small Hungarian town of Szentgotthard, which are involved in it (see map 3.1). The conflict was precipitated by an Austrian company planning to install a large- capacity waste incinerator next to the border near Szentgotthard, which the inhabitants there are striving to prevent. The conflict has not been deleterious for traditional neighbourhood relations, but it has rearranged former political coalitions along various interests and values, resulting in the emergence of new cross- border and multigenerational networks. In the discourses formed about the conflict, ‘neighbourhood’ appears emphatically as a category that is simultaneously embedded in local, national and EU contexts.

Pest megyei közelképek a szövetkezeti átalakulásról

The authors of the study paid attention to the transformation of the co-operatives in three small regions of Pest county: In the Zsambek Basin that is part of the Pilis-Buda Mountains, in the Danube-valley and in the Homokhatsag (Sandy Hill Ridge) in 1993- 1996. The cases demonstrated in the study prove that a complicated situation burdened with serious contradictions and disharmonies of interests evolved in the early 1990s, partly because of economic and political decisions and partly because of the penetration of market conditions. In Pest county some processes were more significant in their effects than in other regions of Hungary, at the same time, the regfonal differences of the transitions within the county reflects the same picture as the large regions of Hungary show. The way and intensity of the disintegration of the former structure and the shaping new structure were similar in their processes and results in Transdanubia to the case in the Pilis-Buda Mountains, while in the other two small regions the transitions follow the patterns of the Great Hungarian Plain with either stronger or weaker differences, deriving from the effect of the capital city. In the production sphere examined by the authors, the so-called renewed but actually still productive co-operatives were only stabilised in the Zsambek Basin region, due to their natural endowments which are more favourable than the average and their high-value and easily sellable estates. In the other two regions with less favourable endowments, stable co-operatives are the rare exceptions, the majority either function at the cost of a radical contraction or started strong differentiation and were transformed into holdings — or they fell into pieces or simply consume what is lelt of their properties. In these two regions the proportions of the private businesses and smallholders are high and the actors of the agriculture, i.e. co-operatives, businesses or individuals, are linked by different connections.