In the background, searches, wiretapping, rhetorical warfare: what have the Szijjártó-Kuleba meetings been about so far?

Where do the Hungarian and Ukrainian foreign ministers fit into the system of government? How have relations between the two countries evolved over the past three years in the light of the meetings between the acting Foreign Ministers? The paper explores these questions ahead of the meeting of foreign ministers in Uzhhorod on 29 January 2024.

Csilla Fedinec's article (in Hungarian) can be read on 444.hu.

"In Hungarian political discourse and journalism, there is a growing conclusion that the European Union is in fact nothing more than a new version of the Soviet Union." Are those who make such comparisons right?

Csilla Fedinec's article (in Hungarian) can be read on 444.hu.

With the liquidation of Nagorno-Karabakh, one of the frozen conflict zones in the post-Soviet space has been eliminated. How have these conflict zones developed throughout history? How has the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh evolved over the past decades and under what circumstances was it dismantled? How might this affect security in the region and the fate of minorities?

Csilla Fedinec's article (in Hungarian) can be read on 444.hu.

The book Transzilvanizmus. Eszmék, korok, változatok [Transylvanism. Ideas, Eras, Variations] (ed. László Boka) was published by MMA Publishing. The volume contains a study by Tamás Gusztáv Filep titled Urban Transylvanists (Urbánus transzilvanisták).

The article by Gergely Pulay titled Personalized Value Struggles amid Marketization: The Search for the Good among Men on the Margins of Bucharest was published by the journal East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures.

Abstract

In the most notorious, mixed Roma and non-Roma Romanian neighbourhood of Bucharest, structurally accumulated problems of governance turn into practical challenges that need to be tackled with the means at each person’s disposal. Under conditions of capitalist incorporation and prolonged crises on the post-socialist periphery, the main protagonists of this account—male members of an extended network of Spoitori Roma with diverse livelihoods—strive for relative independence not only from market forces but also from actors who may expose them to abuse. In this article, I reflect on personalized value struggles associated with marketization. Instead of accepting the sectorial divisions between formality and informality, I show how marketization elucidates moral evaluations of being and doing good among men who hope to be or become “their own bosses” in precarious urban conditions. Distinguishing folk and analytic concepts, my analysis engages with the moral contestation of the “good” and the ambiguity of value-based human endeavours among different layers of contemporary economic life.

The article by Ildikó Zakariás, Margit Feischmidt, Márton Gerő, András Morauszki, Violetta Zentai and Csilla Zsigmond Solidarity with Displaced People from Ukraine in Hungary: Attitudes and Practices was published by the Journal of International Migration and Integration.

Abstract

The paper explores the attitudes of Hungarian civil society in the context of the war against Ukraine, the active agents of solidarity, and the general social atmosphere associated with welcoming displaced people. Based on a population survey from the summer of 2022, the paper draws an ambivalent picture. First, it highlights the exceptional momentum and mobilising power of civil solidarity both in terms of practical involvement and expressed attitudes. At the same time, the results also reveal the limits and vulnerabilities of civil solidarity—namely, its exposure to populist political discourses which cherish or condemn moral economies of assistance according to vested interests, as well as its embeddedness in a neoliberal reliance on citizens’ individual resources (disposable time and material means), and the salient inequalities in sharing the burdens of humanitarian support. All this reflects that the consensus and relative evenness of solidarity attitudes at the time of our survey were unevenly translated into practical help, burdening those already heavily charged with care responsibilities. With this finding, we underline the importance of exploring solidarity as a complex relationship of attitudes and practices; also, we highlight the need to include the perspectives of care in inquiries of the population’s attitude towards immigrant groups and categories. Our results are drawn from the application of multi-dimensional logistic regression models based on data from a statistical survey involving 1000 respondents representative of Hungary’s adult population.

The article by Zsombor Csata, Márton Péti, Betty Compton, Amy H. Liu and Zsolt Sándor titled The income effects of minority co-ethnic employment: the case of Hungarians in central and Eastern Europe was published in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Abstract

What is the effect of minority co-ethnic employment on income? While the business organizations literature argues diversity allows for knowledge accumulation, optimal labour allocation, and efficient interactions, absent is any consideration of language – e.g. language competency or language ideology. We argue when co-ethnic minorities work together, this shared language allows for bounded trust to develop; it also ensures there are preference similarities – factors that can increase firm productivity and individual wages. Using survey data of minority Hungarians in three Central and Eastern European countries (Romania, Slovakia, and Serbia), we find (1) diversity has no positive effect on income; and in fact, (2) co-ethnic employment increases wages in Southern Slovakia and Vojvodina. Additionally, we confirm that co-ethnic employment is not happening simply because of demographics. Instead, with one exception, the proportion of Hungarians in the workplace is significantly higher than in the areas where these jobs are located – suggesting a strategic behaviour by minority Hungarians. The implication is not that we endorse homogeneous workplaces per se, but that we remain cognizant of how asymmetric linguistic competencies and the underlying linguistic ideologies can shape power hierarchies – thereby limiting the benefits of diversity.

Viktória Bányai and Rita Horváth's article "They Drew What Was in Them: The Past, the Present" Testimonial Drawings as Schoolwork in the Immediate Aftermath of the Holocaust was published in the journal 2/2023 issue of the journal Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation (S:I.M.O.N.)

Abstract

A source group consisting of twenty-six drawings that was created by thirteen- and four-teen-year-old survivors in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust is analysed in this article. The youngsters who drew the testimonial drawings as compulsory school assign-ments were pupils of the High School for Girls of the Neolog Jewish Community of Pest. Our aim is to demonstrate that these drawings are crucial historical sources that document both the Holocaust and its immediate aftermath. Until recently, these kinds of documents have been routinely viewed as merely marginal sources of historical information, mainly because they are visual in nature and were created by young teenagers. Certain factors, such as the school environment, age, gender, and the shared historical experiences of the chil-dren turn the drawings into a source group from which additional information can be gleaned by analysing the individual pieces in one another’s contexts. The analyses of the drawings show that the girls consciously took the role of the witness upon themselves. We also examine how the fact that these drawings were created by females influences the source group.

The full issue is available on the journal's website.

From the contents:

Attachment relationships in the light of an online survey
The impact of the Covid epidemic: as seen by Hungarian emigrants
Why do they stay? Hungarian workers' perceptions of success in England
Károly Tóth's unsent letter to László Dobos, 1986
The reception of the Ellenpontok among the Hungarian elite in Romania
Street names in the successor states

Csilla Fedinec's article titled Attempts of self-determination by the Carpathian Rusyns in the 1860s was published in the 2023 English language issue of Forum Social Science Review.

In the 1860s, the Ruthenians also formulated their basic political demands, similar to the other nationalities in Hungary, although in a less visible way as far as “big politics” on international level is concerned. These political demands were much broader than the right to use the language granted in the Act XLIV of 1868 on National Equality. As such, they can be understood as characteristic manifestations of national self-determination. It is useful to organize these elements into a kind of catalog of problems, with the aim of assessing the legal norms that have been implemented on this basis, as opposed to earlier approaches that did not rely on such a comparison.