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Dreaming homogenous – power switches of history in public discourse in Hungary
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
Abstract
The waves of migration that hit Europe during 2015 are often labelled as the ‘refugee crisis’, however the term ‘crisis’ is doubly understood as that of refugees and that of European politics. Taking the latter view, the present article claims that if one wants to understand the differences between national responses, the concept of social memory is an analytically useful one. We take the case of the Hungarian response to the crisis and explain how the concept of the migrant has been a floating signifier in Hungarian discourse. This is not due to lack of actual migratory movements but because of mnemonic processes typical of Eastern Europe. In the second part of the paper we explain how the floating signifier of the migrant has been manipulated by the Hungarian government and especially Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. We argue that this was made possible by three features: the autocratic transformation of the structure of the public sphere; Orbán’s ability to switch history on/off as he pleases; and four deeply rooted historical repertoires.
... The securitising rhetoric of Orbán had found 'fertile soil', as the security speech acts had been 'accepted' by the identified primary audience, the Hungarian public. Except from the results of the public surveys, the outcomes of the National Consultation, referendum, and 2018's general election confirmed, in a formal manner, that large percentages of the Hungarian electorate resonated with FIDESZ's views about the refugee crisis (Dessewffy and Nagy 2020). ...
... However, the results of the public surveys and 2018's general elections demonstrate that the Hungarian public supported the securitising moves and shared similar views with its government about the immigration crisis. It is noteworthy that Orbán built his 2018 election campaign on the migration issue (Dessewffy and Nagy 2020). Thus, arbitrariness of the Hungarian government to securitise the crisis could not be claimed on the basis of lacking the public's support. ...
This article examines the main components, context, and sequence of the European refugee crisis' securitisation in Hungary. Building on content and discourse analysis, this study finds that Orbán, the Hungarian Head of State, successfully securitised the refugee crisis. This study further examines who Orbán's securitisation audience was and what role it played in the securitisation process. The paper's findings reveal that the Hungarian public opinion was the primary audience of the securitising rhetoric. The Hungarian public sanctioned, by large majorities, the securitising moves and measures of Hungary's ruling FIDESZ party.
... Whether and how historical repertoires emerge and contribute to transforming the axes of inclusion and exclusion in societies, particularly under the influence of new nativist discourses, is a theme of major concern in this issue. In addressing what we call the uses of the past, we distinguish historians' understandings and analysis of the past based on systematic research from 'memory', conceptualised as mobilizations of different groups who make claims about the past based on, and often in the name of, their particular position in a society (see, for example Perron, 2020, andDessewffy andNagy 2020). ...
... Whether and how historical repertoires emerge and contribute to transforming the axes of inclusion and exclusion in societies, particularly under the influence of new nativist discourses, is a theme of major concern in this issue. In addressing what we call the uses of the past, we distinguish historians' understandings and analysis of the past based on systematic research from 'memory', conceptualised as mobilizations of different groups who make claims about the past based on, and often in the name of, their particular position in a society (see, for example Perron, 2020, andDessewffy andNagy 2020). ...
This Introduction addresses questions of migration, history, and memory in the context of recent changes in public discourses on immigrant integration in Europe, focusing on how history is used to make claims about the inclusion of some and the exclusion of others. We highlight how these debates are often framed in a nostalgic tone that sustains categorizations and classifications of the population in terms of ‘natives’, who are allegedly historically rooted, and non-natives, lacking historical roots. To shed light on this process, we put forward the notion of historical repertoires to refer to ways that views of history are used to evaluate and justify the present. We lay out three possible components of these repertoires, showing their utility in analysing the debates discussed in the six European case studies in this issue (Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, and Greece). We also consider some parallels with the United States in how the history of immigration is remembered and used in public debates and political discourse.
... In this article, I investigate how uses of the past result in the categorisation of migrants and minority group members. In contrast to other contributors in this issue (Perron 2020;Dessewffy and Nagy, 2020;Kritikos 2020), I propose to move beyond the history/ memory dichotomy and address not only how memories are actualised by memorial entrepreneurs in discussions about today's migrations but also how uses of the past are embedded in the moral and cultural boundary-making of immigration societies. ...
This article investigates the relationship between history and the boundary-making process studied by cultural sociologists. Drawing on recent works on boundary-making in immigration societies, it argues that a more configurational conception of history is necessary in order to complement the view of history as institutional legacy, which is commonly held in the scholarship on immigrant integration and citizenship. Based on the study of the debates that started in the mid-1980s about immigrant integration in France and the reconstruction of a French political tradition of republican citizenship, and on a dispute that took place between 2004 and 2005 about the legacy of French colonialism, the article shows the role played by the configuration of the past (or historical repertoires) in the construction of the category of ‘Muslims’ as the least valuable member of the French society.
The article discusses solutions to the migration research challenge that appeared in 2022 when the flow of war refugees from Ukraine to Latvia increased very rapidly and in large numbers following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The challenge was to develop a conceptual framework to understand and describe the newcomer community and outline strategies for its integration in Latvia.
The use of philosophical phenomenology and topological hermeneutics in the research made it possible to develop knowledge about the newcomer community, which is necessary to quickly learn their values, attitudes, traditions, and regional characteristics.
Due to its geographical proximity, a similar historical fate and geopolitical threats, Latvian society welcomed the Ukrainian war refugees with great openness, and it was evident that a community of solidarity and even fraternity was emerging between the newcomers and their hosts, forming a new social reality that can be described as the community of “Ukraine in Latvia”. This concept reflects the methodology of its development: the use of place as a synthesis of human geography
and philosophical approaches, which sees migration as the movement of a person from one place to another with its locus, i.e., values, attitudes, and traditions. The mutual need of newcomers and hosts to get to know each other quickly and to coexist is explained by the functioning of cognitive rituals, the key dynamic element of which is the construction of the embodiment of one’s own world.
The approach developed in the article is also applied to the study of religious communities as an ‒ as yet ‒ unconscious resource of migration, using as illustrations the communities of the Latin and Greek Catholic Rite and the problem of pastoral care in the communities of the Orthodox Church which is influenced by the political nature of the Church’s activity in Ukraine.
This essay explores the roots of populism's widespread appeal, looking beyond social-demographic categories to uncover human elements driving its resonance. This paper delves into the significant role of social anxieties and social psychological factors. By tapping into people's anxieties and innate desire for security and belonging amidst uncertainty, populism gains traction. Additionally, it examines the human quest for existential meaning rooted in the fear of mortality, revealing this as a core aspect of populist messaging.
In this article, by analyzing the memory politics of the nativist Hungarian government, it is argued that instead of some Great Narrative about a Golden Age, a political patchwork is in work here. Instead of glorifying one particular historical period, any element used for the constructions of “Greatness” and “Proudness” is used freely. Then I explain the peculiarities of the Hungarian case: that is, Orbán builds a nativist, anti-European, and anti-enlightenment symbolic universe, whereas Hungary is a member of the EU and even heavily subsidized by it. Afterward, using the foundational text of the regime, I explain how central nostalgia, what in this context I call weaponized longing, is for the Orbán regime. Since there is neither specific political Golden Age nor obvious historic victories, the memory of sports successes becomes relevant constructing the memory of greatness. Therefore, in the next part, I illustrate how Orbán uses the sport to articulate and implement a macho worldview and formulate a nativist discourse on a wide variety of seemingly non-sport-related issues from the essence of modernity to gender roles. Then I explain that sport is not just a tool for Orbán, but in fact, a basic model and metaphor for his politics where “Triumph of the Will” is central. Finally, with the juxtaposition of two seminal institutions, the House of Terror and Cult of Puskás, I demonstrate the memory political endeavors of the regime and some of the built-in contradictions that come with these practices. In this nativist patchwork, the seemingly impossible could be achieved; the darkest times could produce the most glorious elements of history.
Geopolitical competition and conflict play a central role in canonical accounts of the emergence of nation-states and national identities. Yet work in this tradition has paid little attention to variation in everyday, popular understandings of nationhood. We propose a macro-historical argument to explain cross-national variation in the types of popular nationalism expressed at the individual level. Our analysis builds on recent advances on the measurement of popular nationalism and a recently introduced geopolitical threat scale (Hiers, Soehl, and Wimmer 2017). With the use of latent class analysis and a series of regression models, we show that a turbulent geopolitical past decreases the prevalence of liberal nationalism (pride in institutions, inclusive boundaries) while increasing the prevalence of restrictive nationalism (less pride in institutions, exclusive boundaries) across 43 countries around the world. Additional analyses suggest the long-term development of institutions is a key mediating variable: states with a less traumatic geopolitical history tend to have more established liberal democratic institutions, which in turn foster liberal forms of popular nationalism.
This Introduction addresses questions of migration, history, and memory in the context of recent changes in public discourses on immigrant integration in Europe, focusing on how history is used to make claims about the inclusion of some and the exclusion of others. We highlight how these debates are often framed in a nostalgic tone that sustains categorizations and classifications of the population in terms of ‘natives’, who are allegedly historically rooted, and non-natives, lacking historical roots. To shed light on this process, we put forward the notion of historical repertoires to refer to ways that views of history are used to evaluate and justify the present. We lay out three possible components of these repertoires, showing their utility in analysing the debates discussed in the six European case studies in this issue (Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, and Greece). We also consider some parallels with the United States in how the history of immigration is remembered and used in public debates and political discourse.
The study describes Hungary’s policy towards asylum seekers and refugees in the tense period of 2015–2016 before and after the erection of fences at its southern borders of Hungary. It offers a theoretical explanation of the legal measures and practical actions. After briefly reviewing the factual basis, that is the magnitude of the movements and the number of decisions taken in the EU and in Hungary and the pertinent legal changes in 2015–2016 it elaborates the theoretical fundaments. Securitization majority identitarian populism and crimmigration are invoked as explanatory frames. The paper then re-assembles the factual elements under six headings showing them in a new light. These are: denial, deterrence, obstruction, punishment, free riding constituting lack of solidarity and breaching the law (international, European, domestic). Finally the question is raised if all these moves are compatible with the duty of loyal co-operation of Member States with each-other and the EU as prescribed by article Article 4 (3) TEU.
This study examines various ideologies and myths immigrants hold about their homeland, then turns to look at the relationship over time between immigrants and their natal Hungary. First it explores massive emigrations and minimal remigrations from the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While it is impossible to sharply divide economic push factors from political ones, the motivations to leave Hungary were primarily economic in that time. Then I turn to three periods: migrations during the era between the two World Wars; immediately after the Second World War; and to the socialist regime between 1948 and 1989. These times the push factors were mainly political. Finally, I pay attention to the first dozen years of the post-socialist period when emigration was, once again, mainly economically motivated, and remigrations were frequent particularly, though not only, for retirees. (As the study that follows the present one will illustrate, since the Fall of 2010—along with global economic problems—political factors, generally low morale, lack of trust in a viable future are major factors once again for the massive outmigration). The immigrants’ ties with the homeland changed through time depending not on the intentions of the individuals, but on global politics, and the transformation of the various regimes in Hungary. I discuss some versions of both virtual and actual homecoming, as well as expressions and meanings of long distance nationalism.
Hungary’s 2010 election brought to power a Fidesz parliamentary supermajority led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban. In just two years, they have fundamentally changed the constitutional order of Hungary. The current government now has very few checks on its own power, but the new constitutional order permits the governing party to lodge its loyalists in crucial long-term positions with veto power over what future governments might do. As a result, the Fidesz government has achieved a remarkable constitutional feat: giving themselves maximum room for maneuver while simultaneously entrenching their power, their policies and their people for the foreseeable future.
The Hungarian solution to migration is a policy package consisting of three elements: selective closure of borders, series of deterrents, and governmental xenophobic discourse and propaganda campaigns. This policy package is legitimized by the Hungarian government’s strategic self-positioning as the “frontier of Europe.” This position is enabled by interwoven moral divides of the European space: the east/west and the Europe/Balkans. At the same time, the Hungarian solution is anchored to a series of domestic political manoeuvres that advance a hegemonic discourse of citizenship and attempt to exclude domestic, marginalized populations from the public sphere. In order to understand the Hungarian government’s punitive approach to migration, its policy needs to be examined in the domestic context, on the one hand, and in relation to those European moral hierarchies that are used to legitimize these policies, on the other. This article is a contribution to discussion on the dynamics of European peripheries in relation to migration and location.
Ever since the ‘refugee crisis’ hit European shores, policymakers, journalists and politicians have sought out knowledge on ‘unwanted’ migration and ‘what to do about it’. As influential people knock on academic doors – at times seeking out anthropologists, such as this author – how should we engage, and under what conditions? The seemingly endless rounds of panel debates, conferences and other policy-focused outreach pull academics towards ‘high-level’ engagements, while short-term or politically driven ‘emergency’ funding pushes us towards narrowly defined research objectives. Meanwhile, the ‘impact’ agenda – most developed in the UK, yet increasingly encroaching on other academic ecosystems – is shifting institutional incentives towards specific forms of scholarly activity. This article builds an ‘auto-ethnographic’ account of my own experiences of crossing the borders of anthropology at a time of perceived migratory crisis and increasing impact calls. Delineating the pitfalls and risks of ‘capture’ by policy agendas, the article argues for active navigation of the borderlands between academia and its various publics. For anthropologists to wrest some control, I suggest, we must be willing to take risks and get our hands dirty; strategically deploy our ethnographic sensibilities to the full; and stand ready to apply our analytical skills to powerful systems – including, not least, to the impact agenda itself.
The book critically engages with theoretical developments in international relations and security studies to develop a fresh conceptual framework for studying security.Contents 1. Politics of insecurity, technology and the political2. Security framing: the question of the meaning of security3. Displacing the spectre of the state in security studies: From referent objects to techniques of government4. Securitizing migration: Freedom from existential threats and the constitution of insecure communities5. European integration and societal insecurity6. Freedom and security in the EU: A Foucaultian view on spill-over7. Migration, securitization and the question of political community in the EU8. De-securitizing migration: Security knowledge and concepts of the political9. Conclusion: the politics of framing insecurity
What are the root causes of intolerance? This book addresses that question by developing a universal theory of what determines intolerance of difference in general, which includes racism, political intolerance, moral intolerance and punitiveness. It demonstrates that all these seemingly disparate attitudes are principally caused by just two factors: Individuals’ innate psychological predispositions to intolerance (“authoritarianism”) interacting with changing conditions of societal threat. The threatening conditions, particularly resonant in the present political climate, that exacerbate authoritarian attitudes include, most critically, great dissension in public opinion and general loss of confidence in political leaders. Using purpose-built experimental manipulations, cross-national survey data and in-depth personal interviews with extreme authoritarians and libertarians, the book shows that this simple model provides the most complete account of political conflict across the ostensibly distinct domains of race and immigration, civil liberties, morality, crime and punishment, and of when and why those battles will be most heated.
Refugee and Forced Migration Studies has grown from being a concern of a relatively small number of scholars and policy researchers in the 1980s to a global field of interest with thousands of students worldwide studying displacement either from traditional disciplinary perspectives or as a core component of newer programmes across the Humanities and Social and Political Sciences. Today the field encompasses both rigorous academic research which may or may not ultimately inform policy and practice, as well as action-research focused on advocating in favour of refugees' needs and rights.
This authoritative Handbook critically evaluates the birth and development of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, and analyses the key contemporary and future challenges faced by academics and practitioners working with and for forcibly displaced populations around the world. The 52 state-of-the-art chapters, written by leading academics, practitioners, and policymakers working in universities, research centres, think tanks, NGOs and international organizations, provide a comprehensive and cutting-edge overview of the key intellectual, political, social and institutional challenges arising from mass displacement in the world today. The chapters vividly illustrate the vibrant and engaging debates that characterize this rapidly expanding field of research and practice.
Most studies of how refugees are represented focus on negative media representations. Less attention has been paid to sympathetic counter-representations. This article explores the representations preferred by refugee advocacy organizations and how they tend to exclude the mass of ordinary refugees and the difficult arguments required to defend refugee rights. The article outlines the rise of the health paradigm for understanding the conditions of refugees. The contemporary representation of refugees as traumatized victims is inspired by compassion. However, the trauma framework implies impaired capacity and the need for individuals to surrender their welfare to expert authorities. The article argues that casting refugees in the sick role risks compromising their rights. The article is informed by the writing of the sociologist Talcott Parsons on the sick role and the philosopher Hannah Arendt on refugees.
This paper takes the position that, if the goal is to better understand designing for collective remembering, we cannot afford to overlook the importance of forgetting. Memories are understood as relations of power through which we, as individuals and groups, actively negotiate and decide what can be recollected and what can be forgotten. And without being able to decide what we can remember and forget, we are effectively left without hope of becoming different people or creating different worlds. Furthermore, these choices and decision-making processes not only relate to content-generation or what data gets remembered (stored, displayed, etc.) in any given application, but they are always already embedded in our research and design cultures and practices. Ultimately, this paper argues for creating and supporting assemblies for deciding collective actions on collective matters-of-concern.
In ten brilliant essays, Jan Assmann explores the connections between religion, culture, and memory. Building on Maurice Halbwachs's idea that memory, like language, is a social phenomenon as well as an individual one, he argues that memory has a cultural dimension too. He develops a persuasive view of the life of the past in such surface phenomena as codes, religious rites and festivals, and canonical texts on the one hand, and in the Freudian psychodrama of repressing and resurrecting the past on the other. Whereas the current fad for oral history inevitably focuses on the actual memories of the last century or so, Assmann presents a commanding view of culture extending over five thousand years. He focuses on cultural memory from the Egyptians, Babylonians, and the Osage Indians down to recent controversies about memorializing the Holocaust in Germany and the role of memory in the current disputes between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East and between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.
This article argues that humanitarian agencies represent refugees in terms of helplessness and loss. It is suggested that this representation consigns refugees to their bodies, to a mute and faceless physical mass. Refugees are denied the right to present narratives that are of consequence institutionally and politically. Narration of refugee experiences becomes the prerogative of Western ‘experts’: refugee lives become a site where Western ways of knowing are reproduced. The central focus of this article is a detailed examination of a project by Oxfam GB called ‘Listening to the Displaced’. It is suggested that Oxfam fails to consider that its interests as a humanitarian/development agency lead to the filtering of a particular sort of voice of the displaced. ‘Listening to the Displaced’ does not succeed in providing refugees with a means to speak for themselves, but rather results in a de‐politicized and de‐historicized image of refugees.
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