Does citizenship boost ethnic identity for young trans-border Hungarians?
By Nicolina Karaolia (Cyprus) and Imran Mehr (Pakistan)
Sitting in a café somewhere in the center of Budapest, three female Hungarian students discuss ethnic identity, commenting on the issue of ethnic Hungarians who live as minorities in neighboring countries. They are concerned with how these groups of trans-border Hungarians are treated when they return to Hungary and they discuss the law of 2010 which gives ethnic Hungarians in the Carpathian basin the right to dual citizenship. In another café in the city, a Hungarian Romanian gives an account of his life as a member of the Hungarian minority in Romania. The young Hungarians agree on one thing: The matter of trans-border Hungarians is a highly politicised one, connected with nationalist ideas and used by politicians to serve their own interests.
Historical Background
Hungary, like many other countries in Europe, had its border re-drawn after the wars that scarred the continent and, as a result, many of its citizens were stranded in what became part of the neighbouring countries. It was the Trianon Treaty in 1920 which sealed Hungary’s shrinking by 72% and resulted in more than 3 million ethnic Hungarians who found themselves living in another country, without moving an inch from their homes. This created what is known today as the issue of trans-border Hungarians in the Carpathian basin.
Large minorities of ethnic Hungarians continue to live in neighbouring countries and constitute 6.5% of the total population in Romania, 8.5% of the population of Slovakia, 3,5 % of the population of Serbia and 0.3% of the total population of Ukraine. Smaller Hungarian minorities reside in other countries all over the world, and together with the larger diaspora, they amount to one third of the 15 million ethnic Hungarians.
The story of Szilard
Szilard Istvan Pap is a university student, born in Transylvania, currently living in Budapest. An ethnic Hungarian by descent, Szilard has dual citizenship and he declares himself “a special kind of Hungarian and a proud citizen of Romania”.
Szilard grew up in a region in Transylvania where Hungarians were the overwhelming majority. He would only speak and hear Hungarian around him, in the shops, in school, in local authority offices.
He remembers a happy time growing up, even though, as a minority Hungarian child, he got the sense from a very young age that he was somehow different. Notions of ethnicity and nationality became familiar to him in an early age.
He remembers everyday interactions with Romanian people and some peculiar incidents, usually related to old Romanian ladies who were upset when he didn’t speak perfect Romanian, but he describes these incidents as marginal and not important enough to affect his everyday life. Generally, apart from the ethnic clashes of Târgu Mures in 1990, there has been no significant ethnic conflict and the rights of the Hungarian minority are largely respected in Romania. According to a publication by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, the situation of the Hungarian minority in Romania has been perceived as a model of respect for cultural and ethnic diversity.
Life in Budapest is comfortable for Szilard. He acquired Hungarian citizenship, so he has all his rights protected. He has health insurance and is allowed to vote. However, he doesn’t feel completely accepted. “People comment on my accent and maliciously correct me. This happens more often here than when I speak Romanian in Romania”.
Perceptions of Hungarian youth
Réka Holman, a doctoral student at the Institute of Art Theory and Media Studies at Eötvös Loránd University, believes Hungarians do look upon their trans-border compatriots with suspicion. “I think we generated a lot of outside borders. Trans-border Hungarians think that Hungarians don’t care about them and do not think them as their own,” says Réka.
Her statement probably doesn’t apply to the beliefs of the current, right-wing government; dealing with trans-border Hungarians was a priority policy. One of the first laws to be adopted after the elections in 2010 was to allow ethnic Hungarians who live outside of Hungary to acquire dual citizenship. Consequently, the new citizens have some benefits, such as freedom of movement in the EU (in the case of Ukrainian and Serbian Hungarians) and voting rights in the Hungarian state.
Andrea, a Masters student of Communication and Media Studies at the Institute of Art Theory and Media Studies at Eötvös Loránd University, agrees that giving citizenship to ethnic Hungarians is a good thing, but is concerned about political issues. “I think Hungarian people living outside should have a right to vote. The problem of their right to vote is a political one. If they can vote they will be right wing voters. So, there will be a majority of right wing in Hungary.”
Szilard agrees that the issue of dual citizenship is a political move and a measure “implemented by politicians in order to gain votes and invoke a national feeling”. According to him, the effort to institutionalise the issue of trans-border Hungarians started in the 1990s. The government started to offer benefits to ethnic Hungarians, such as work permits, cheap transportation, financial aid for cultural purposes, in order to maintain the national identity. For Szilard, dual citizenship is only useful for practical reasons. “I didn’t take Hungarian citizenship to feel more Hungarian, it is just practical to have it now that I live here. I am a proud Romanian citizen and I really like Romania”.
The issue of trans-border Hungarians is as ethnic as it is political. Politicians all over the world have repeatedly used a nationalistic rhetoric, manipulating ethnic sentiment to gain popularity. Although trans-border Hungarians welcome citizenship from Hungary mostly for practical reasons, the young people interviewed in this article believe that ethnic identity and citizenship need not be aligned. People are connected to the places they are born, as Szilard is connected now with both Romania through the memories of his childhood, and with Hungary through bonds of ethnic kinship.
