Abstract
Nation-building narratives under communism in Eastern Europe created certain conditions of belonging and national identity; this process was reversed after regime change, and with changing values, a “new” nation and a “new” society was shaped. By analyzing the situation of Roma in Hungary, this study reveals that post-communist Hungary, similar to other countries in the region, is increasingly a “nationalizing state”—an environment highly conducive to nationalism—where series of economic hardships have “deepened a racialization process.” In this chapter, I interrogate how the changing political and economic context—namely, the fusion of economic concerns and nationalist claims in contemporary Hungary—has significantly affected the identity and value system of Roma minority, necessitating new coping mechanisms.
“What makes a Hungarian a true Hungarian? That he considers Hungary his home and does something about it! […] We don’t need parasites and leeches! […] The person is worth as much as he contributes to the society. Gypsies are useless individuals if they just have to be supported.”
Non-Roma teacher
“Despite my [Roma] ethnic origin, I have a clean and respectful job! They [gaje] see that I am a Gypsy, but I work…and that’s why they respect me!”
61-year-old Roma woman
“The only problem is that there are no jobs… Hungarians have hard time finding employment nowadays, let alone Gypsies. As a Gypsy… you have to work three times as hard.”
Roma man
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Notes
- 1.
Brubaker defines nationalizing states as “states that are conceived by their dominant elites as nation-states, as states of and for particular nations, yet as ‘incomplete’ or ‘unrealized’ nation-states, as insufficiently ‘national in a variety of senses” (Brubaker, 1996, p. 411).
- 2.
This paper was originally written for the Summer School on Citizens Resilience in Times of Crisis, in Florence, Italy, in July 2015, and later presented during the Annual Meeting of Gypsy Lore Society in Chisinau, Moldova, in September 2015.
- 3.
Slezkine’s work is in the context of the Soviet Union, but the same ideology was later applied in Eastern Europe.
- 4.
For example, see Gale Stokes’s The Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe (Oxford University Press, 1993), Constantine C. Menges’ Transitions from Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe (University Press of America, 1993), Barbara Wejner’s Transition to Democracy in Eastern Europe and Russia: Impact on Politics, Economy and Culture (Praeger, 2002), Edward P. Lazear’s Economic Transition in Eastern Europe and Russia: Realities of Reform (Hoover Institution Press, 1995), and many others.
- 5.
Disturbingly, while one of Jobbik’s platform is describing Roma as a group who “strive for neither integration nor employment nor education” in addition to public discussion of “Gypsy crime” (Bendavid, 2014), threats of closing Roma in ghettoes, and warning Roma “to conform or to leave,” they recently won their first independent seat during a by-election in the town of Tapolca. Far-right ideology resurfaced after regime change, which undoubtedly planted the seeds of Jobbik’s current popularity (Dunai, 2014).
- 6.
George Soros, the founder of the Open Society Foundations and the most critical player in the movement, stated himself that “the key to success is the education of a new generation of Roma who do not seek to assimilate into the general population, but deliberately retain their identity as Roma. Educated, successful Roma will shatter the prevailing negative stereotypes by their very existence” (Soros, 2010).
- 7.
In 1996/7, 0.22% university students were Roma, in 2001/2002 the number grew to 0.6%, later in 2010 to approximately 1.3–1.5%, and with this increase by 2020, there might be 2.1–2.5% university students who are Roma (Polónyi, 2004, p. 20).
- 8.
It is hard to have an estimate of self-identifying Roma intellectuals, but several reports indicate that with “increase in numbers of young, educated Roma, we are observing a qualitative change in Roma civil society” (Mirga, 2014).
- 9.
For critical importance of social networks to form viable civil society, active civil engagement, and functioning democracies, see Putnam’s classic “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital” Putnam (1995), but also Fukuyama (2001), Hooghe and Stolle (2003), and Edwards, Foley, and Dian (2001), among others.
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Dunajeva, J. (2018). Negotiating Identity and Belonging After Regime Change: Hungarian Society and Roma in Post-Communist Hungary. In: Lebedeva, N., Dimitrova, R., Berry, J. (eds) Changing Values and Identities in the Post-Communist World . Societies and Political Orders in Transition. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72616-8_20
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