From national inclusion to economic exclusion: ethnic Hungarian labour migration to Hungary^*

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Over the past fifteen years, Hungarian nationalists have been redefining membership in the Hungarian nation to include all Hungarians in the region, irrespective of citizenship. This deterritorialised notion of the nation has been given increased discursive and institutional legitimacy. But ethnic Hungarians from Romania who have gone to Hungary in search of work have not discovered national unity. Rather, the vision of national inclusion preferred by elites has been met by the reality of economic and national exclusion engendered through labour migration. The migrants' national self-understandings have taken shape not in accordance with the wishes of nationalist elites, but rather in response to the economic imperatives of labour migration. Rather than deducing the salience of national unity from its political privileging, the purpose of this paper is to explain how national disunity is experienced, constituted and reproduced in the context of ethnic Hungarian labour migration.

Kosovo and the Framing of Non-Secessionist Self-Government Claims in Romania

“…These conditions help explain the high levels of emigration and labour migration to Hungary, especially during the first decade of post-communism, when Hungary was considered a success story of democratic consolidation and a front-runner of EU accession. Interest in Hungary as a destination decreased during the 2000s, in a political environment of divisive politics in the kin-state centre coupled with the gradual accumulation of negative cross-border experiences and narratives, which increased ZSUZSA CSERGŐ 898 distances between Transylvanian Hungarians and Hungarians in the kin-state (Horváth 2005;Fox 2007). These developments also prompted an increasing number of Hungarian minority politicians to focus more strongly on regional economic development.…”

‘Refugee’ or ‘returnee’? The ethnic geopolitics of diasporic resettlement in China and intergenerational change

“…In ethnically privileged migration, co‐ethnics ‘returning’ to an ancestral homeland are presumed to cohere easily with the indigenous 8 population, which is bound by kinship obligations too (Joppke and Zeff 2001; Žmegač 2005). Yet assumed similarities actually accentuate cultural differences, such as in the way indigenous Hungarians see ethnic Hungarians from Romania as unskilled ‘Romanian’ labour migrants (Fox 2009). Likewise, there is societal segregation of the nikkeijin in Japanese society and internal differentiations between the nikkeijin of different nationalities too (Takenaka 2009).…”

“…Some land conflicts with the indigenous Chinese were resolved only through the amalgamation of surrounding villages with the overseas Chinese farms so that the indigenous Chinese would enjoy the same privileges (Zheng 1995). As with other ethnically privileged migrations (Fox 2009; Joppke 2005; Takenaka 2009; Žmegač 2005), the SEA refugee–returnees are identified as co‐ethnics by the state yet they face degrees of exclusion because of their former nationalities, cultural distinctiveness and the ethnic privileges given to them.…”

“…‘outsiders’) in both ethnically privileged and forced migrations (e.g. Brun 2010; Da Lomba 2010; Fox 2009; Takenaka 2009), the situation of the SEA refugee–returnees demonstrates that their cultural distinctiveness lends itself to opportunity for reinventing the farms in the post‐1980s reform period.…”

‘For us, Migration is Ordinary’: Post-1989 Labour Migration from Bulgaria to Turkey

“…Similarly, around 4 million individuals of German descent ( Aussiedler) from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union migrated to Germany under the legal auspices of 'the right of return' defined by the post-war German constitution. Other well-studied cases of 'return' migrations framed in terms of ethno-national identity include the migration of Jews from the Soviet Union to Israel (Remennick 2003), Hungarians from Romania to Hungary (Fox 2009), and Japanese from Brazil to Japan (Tsuda 2003). However, such 'policy favoritism' towards ethnic return migrants, as Voutira terms it for the Greek context, has been subject to certain shifts since the 1990s, rendering legalization more arduous in both the Greek and the German contexts.…”