Protected Areas on the Slovenian–Hungarian Border: A Place and Space of Nature and Culture

The article presents the facts relating to a century of shifting borders along the frontier between today’s Slovenia and Hungary. As borders primarily symbolize the physical strength of the state, they are an essential subject for people living in borderlands anywhere in the world. Following the Great War, the 1919 delineation of borders in what had for centuries been a stable area (Slovenian March) caused upheaval not only for political actors but also for those persons who suddenly found themselves living in separate states. Later in 1948, the border became part of the Iron Curtain, which completely paralyzed communications in the Yugoslavian (Slovenian)-Hungarian cross-border region and branded it with a highly specific historical and social dynamic. The turn of the 1980s to the 1990s was marked by the fall of the Iron Curtain between the East-European (communist) and Western (capitalist) worlds. After 2004 and 2007, when the Slovenian and Hungarian states became first members of the European Union and then the Schengen area, it seemed that the border would fade away.

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Slovenian-Hungarian Border: A Historical Outline

Hirnök

Gradišnik

2020

“…Most of the ethnographies of various European border regions (Markov 2015;Kockel et al 2012;Heyman -Cunningham 2004;Ballinger 2002;Haller -Donnan 2000;Bellier -Wilson 2000) sought to document how local communities were important participants in much wider relations of power, exploitation, domination, and subversion (Wilson 2012:166). The complex changes affecting the regions of Goričko and Őrség following the great enlargement of the European Union and introduction of the Schengen regime have only received greater attention in recent years (Fikfak -Mészáros 2019;Mód 2019;Munda Hirnök -Slavec Gradišnik 2019;Ispán et al 2018).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges of Cross-Border Cooperation: The Initiative of Trilateral Goričko–Raab–Őrség Nature Park

Pisk

2020

The trajectories of social actions comprising nature conservation and regional economic development in the Slovenian-Austrian-Hungarian tri-border area discussed in this paper are closely linked to the landscape of the Slovenian-Austrian-Hungarian border. Processual understanding bounds landscape to human activities and other non-human agents, all of whom constitute the landscape-in-the-making. The Őrség National Park and Goričko Landscape Park, as designated nature reserves, are subject to human influences through their protection and, as intrinsically objects of human agency, are rich sites of social production and interaction. The cross-border initiative of the Trilateral Goričko–Raab–Őrség Nature Park is analyzed through the politics of European integration and territorial cooperation in the peripheral regions and their financial programs. Through field research and interviews with social actors, the complexity of the obstacles that hinder the functioning and effective management of the actions of the proposed Trilateral Nature Park initiative and the ambivalent attitude of the inhabitants towards the actions of the three parks is observed.

“Eyes Have No Border”. Presencing the Slovenian-Hungarian Border in Goričko and the Rába Valley

Gradišnik

Hirnök

2020

The article draws on the written and oral memories of people living along the border between Slovenia (Goričko in Prekmurje) and Hungary (the Rába Valley). They are presented as comments on a century-long process of political changes in this borderland and demonstrate a plethora of ways in which border shifts intrude on people’s everyday lives. People’s concern with the border is reflected in the fact that it is a topic that emerges in any conversation with individuals living next to it, whether in the context of work, family, daily errands or stories of the past and present. In this article, informed by two concepts–border and memory– we present memories and perceptions of the border as they are expressed in casual comments or observations and semi-structured conversations with interviewees in the field. Life in borderlands is always localized, and there are visible divergences in the experience of the border on the Slovenian and Hungarian side. In Prekmurje, historical events along the border, especially the post-Trianon one, and the memory of these events are perpetuated through anniversaries of the annexation of Prekmurje to the Kingdom of SCS, whereas in the Rába Valley, memories especially relate to the Iron Curtain period. In a much more poignant way, they also constitute the present Slovenian community in ethnic terms as they are mediated in their vernacular.