Abstract
This chapter consists of two broader parts. The first discusses the macro-level demographic processes affecting the Hungarian community of Romania over the past century, including assimilation, ethnic differences in fertility and mortality, respectively, migratory processes, arguing that the negative trends in these domains are a consequence of the power asymmetries inherent in the nation-state. The second part starts from the assumption that censuses are inevitably political tools in the battle over the legitimate representation of social realities and provides an analysis of the processes of ethnic classification employed at the censuses, also discussing two important situations where census identification and everyday ethnic categorization do not necessarily fit, namely the case of Hungarian-speaking Roma and Csángós (Catholics of Hungarian origin) in the Moldova region of Romania.
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Notes
- 1.
The methodological problems of such a comparison are multiple. In a later subsection of this chapter, I will discuss the changes of the techniques of census ethnic classification. Next to this problem, the results of both the Hungarian and Romanian censuses were contested. As for an analysis of the (defensive) reactions of the Romanian public opinion to Hungarian censuses between 1880 and 1910, see Botoş et al. (2016). Blomqvist discussed in detail the role of censuses in the nationalizing policies of Hungary and Romania between 1880 and 1941 (2014, pp. 75–85; 222–224; 278–280; 333–334). Brubaker et al. highlighted that struggles over census results were an immanent part of ethnic politics after the collapse of communism too (2006, pp. 151–160). Our starting point is that censuses are not simple bureaucratic exercises but are part of the political struggle over the legitimate representation of social reality (Kertzer and Arel 2002). As a consequence, one cannot omit census data but should be careful when using it in the analysis of ethno-demographic processes.
- 2.
From an administrative point of view, the 2011 census was quite chaotic. It was designed as a traditional census with enumerators and face-to-face interviews with paper-based questionnaires. Slightly more than 19 million persons were registered with this methodology on the entire territory of Romania. However, following the census, the government decided to supplement the census database using the population register. Due to this exercise, the population of Romania rose above 20 million, which is obviously an overestimation of the country’s resident population. As the population register does not contain information about ethnic belonging, we lack this information for 1.2 million people. Similarly to the method of the National Institute of Statistics, we calculated the proportion of ethnic categories from the number of people whose ethnic identification was known. On the methodological problems of the 2011 census, see Ghețău (2013).
- 3.
These estimations were based on retrospective inverse projections. This method is used in historical demographic research (Lee 2004) to estimate missing data on vital statistics, and it is an inverse of demographic projections using the cohort-component method. See the detailed analysis and the methodology in Gyurgyík and Kiss (2010, pp. 66–70).
- 4.
In 1966, a drastic ban on abortion came into force. While in other Eastern Bloc countries positive incentives were the main tools of population policy, in Romania the emphasis was on punitive measures. On this, see Kligman (1998).
- 5.
The parents are asked to classify their newborn by nationality (naționalitate), meaning in this case ethno-national background. As mentioned already, a similar terminology was used in censuses until 2002, when it was replaced by ethnicity (etnie). In the vital statistics, the terminology has not been changed, leading to more and more confusion, as naționalitate today can be interpreted as both ethno-national belonging and citizenship. I will discuss these aspects later.
- 6.
There were 22,000 Hungarian births in 1989 and only 14,000 in 1992.
- 7.
- 8.
Brubaker (1998) called this process migration of ethnic unmixing.
- 9.
- 10.
The migration of Hungarians also took various forms. Many Transylvanian Hungarians found employment in the secondary labor market of Hungary (Bodó and Bartha 1996). However, the emigration of highly skilled segments (Gödri and Tóth 2005) and the educational migration (Szentannai 2001; Horváth 2004) of the Hungarian youth has also been significant.
- 11.
The migratory regime is the totality of legal norms and institutions regulating the possibility of exit (in the sending country) and of the entrance and integration (in the receiving country).
- 12.
As mentioned already, the enumerators had registered slightly more than 19 million persons and this number was completed eventually from the population register. The migratory loss calculated based on preliminary figures is more or less in line with the mirror statistics of major receiving countries concerning immigrants from Romania.
- 13.
Now, we omit the problem that the spatially bounded character of populations (societies) cannot be anymore taken for granted. In an era of transnational migration, people can be part simultaneously of more than one society. In other words, the demographic model taking migration as an output and input variable is an oversimplification. See Faist (2010).
- 14.
- 15.
Of course, identification with ethnic categories in everyday settings is highly contextual in Transylvania too. See Brubaker et al. (2006, pp. 207–239). However, probably due to identity campaigns and ethno-political struggles, census identification is relatively rigid and reflected.
- 16.
One should emphasize that ethno-cultural reproduction and assimilation in this framework are macro-level phenomena characterizing a population and not individual biographies. See also Brubaker (2001).
- 17.
In Timiș/Temes, Hunediara/Hunyad, Sibiu/Szeben, and Caraș Severin/Krassó-Szörény counties, the majority of younger generation Hungarians engage in ethnically mixed marriages. In the Hungarian-majority region of Székely Land, the proportion of mixed marriages is below 5%, while the majority of children growing up in mixed marriages will have Hungarian as their first language.
- 18.
The outlines of a regime of counting to avoid discrimination can be observed in connection with the issue of Roma integration. For instance, applicants for (nationally administered) EU funds for combating poverty and marginality are explicitly asked to annex detailed descriptions of Roma communities they would like to deal with. Local authorities can also apply for (substantial) funds following a careful mapping of Roma communities of their administrative units. See http://www.fonduri-structurale.ro/stiri/16699/pocu-ghidul-solicitantului-pentru-implementarea-strategiilor-de-dezvoltare-locala-in-comunitatile-marginalizate-publicat-spre-consultare.
- 19.
There was a discontinuity compared to the censuses of the pre-World War I period in the Old Romanian Kingdom, which did not gather information about cultural belonging but asked only about the citizenship of the residents.
- 20.
This has happened both in the successor states of the Hapsburg monarchy (among them in Romania) and in the Soviet Union. As for the Soviet “regime of counting”, see Hirsch (2004).
- 21.
Several authors emphasize the “objectivity” of the 1930 census, highlighting that it met international standards of the era (Varga 1999; Blomqvist 2014, p. 278). The latter may be true; however, meeting international standards does not mean that the 1930 census was independent of political considerations or that it can be interpreted without taking into account classificatory struggles.
- 22.
On the Hungarian reception of the 1930 Romanian census, see Seres and Egry (2011). It was frequently mentioned by Hungarian commentators that in many cases census enumerators in fact hetero-identified Hungarian-speaking Jews, Swabians, Armenians, or Hungarian Greek Catholics of allegedly Ruthenian or Romanian origin.
- 23.
See on this topic Simon (2008), who analyzes the struggles over official ethnic classification in France, which is most strongly attached among the European states to the republican idea of national unity and ethnic blindness.
- 24.
It is better to conceptualize this pressure as indirect, as Eurostat or other EU-level institutions do not formulate direct requests to Eastern European national statistical offices to alter their techniques of ethnic counting. However, many Eastern European social scientists and statisticians have become fascinated by the integrationist ideal of not counting and many find the actual regimes of counting in Eastern Europe inadequate or immoral. They might push toward an integrationist regime of not counting, as it happened in Hungary before the 2011 census, when the Census Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences formulated such a recommendation (which was ultimately rejected by the newly elected right-wing government in 2011).
- 25.
- 26.
- 27.
The notion of markedness denotes the asymmetries exiting in linguistic and cognitive structures. Most importantly, it emphasizes that the relation between categories is not symmetrical, a dominant, and a subordinated category exists. Initially, this terminology had been used in structuralist linguistics but ultimately it was borrowed by social scientists to describe the cognitive mechanisms beyond social categorization. Waugh (1982) used it to describe the relation between categories of man and woman, white and black, sighted and blind, heterosexual and homosexual, fertility and barrenness. It is also important that the relation between categories is context dependent. A category that is marked in one social context could be the unmarked one in another context. Brubaker et al. (2006) gave us examples of everyday contexts where the usually marked category of Hungarian becomes unmarked, while the usually unmarked Romanian becomes marked.
- 28.
- 29.
The response rate was 98.1% for the total number of 3284 municipalities of Romania.
- 30.
This is one of the characteristics of ranked systems of groups described by Horowitz (1985).
- 31.
On the problems of being simultaneously Roman Catholic and Romanian, see Diaconescu (2008).
- 32.
Communists tried to use the Hungarian identity project to reduce the influence of the Roman Catholic clergy. The Hungarian schools functioned between 1950 and 1955 (Nagy 2011, pp. 121–122).
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Kiss, T. (2018). Demographic Dynamics and Ethnic Classification: An Introduction to Societal Macro-Processes. In: Kiss, T., Székely, I., Toró , T., Bárdi, N., Horváth, I. (eds) Unequal Accommodation of Minority Rights. Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78893-7_10
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