Trickster Logics in the Hungarian Dual-Citizenship Offer

Abstract

This article argues that the option of dual citizenship, available since 2010 for Hungarians living abroad, carries the possibility to create new types of national and civic identification patterns. This process can be considered as liminal, since it attempts to modify the nature of minority identity that was created by historic traumas and became institutionalized as social order, and because it attempts to open a new chapter in the relationship between Hungary and the Hungarian minority communities abroad. Although the patterns of the new (citizenship-influenced) minority identity are already somewhat visible, the full elaboration of this identity is yet to come. Therefore, the “managers” of the identity change might become tricksters.

Attila Z. Papp is a sociologist, and is director of the Institute for Minority Studies at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Centre for Social Sciences.

Notes

1. By April 2015, 716,662 citizenship applications were registered, out of which 446,603 were submitted by Romanian, 135,898 Serb, and 114,263 Ukrainian citizens. Thus, it is clear that Hungarians living in those three countries represent the majority of the applicants.

2. In 2016, there were 274,627 people eligible to vote; see the official website of the Hungarian Election Office: www.valasztas.hu (accessed 3 Nov. 2016).

3. Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999); Jonathan Fox, “Unpacking Transnational Citizenship,” Annual Review of Political Science 8: 171–201 (2005).

4. In the framework of the research, there were nine focus-group discussions in Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, and Slovakia. Members of Hungarian minority communities living in these countries took part in these discussions.

5. Agnes Horvath, Modernism and Charisma (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Agnes Horvath and Bjørn Thomassen, “Mimetic Errors in Liminal Schismogenesis,” International Political Anthropology 1(1): 3–24 (2008); Bjørn Thomassen, Liminality and the Modern. Living Through In-Between (Farnham Surrey: Ashgate, 2014), 99–105; Szakolczai Arpad, “Liminality and Experience: Structuring Transitory Situations and Transformative Events,” International Political Anthropology 2(1): 141–72 (2009).

6. Such was the hope in popular service in the interwar period, or in communism after WW2; Ágnes Horváth, “A Népszolgálat, a Szolgálat és a Nép között,” in Nándor Bárdi, Tamás G. Filep, and József D. Lőrincz, eds., Népszolgálat: A közösségi elkötelezettség alakváltozatai a magyar kisebbségek történetében (Pozsony: Kalligram, 2015), 267–87.

7. About the inflation of identity concepts, see Peter Stachel, “Identitás: A kortárs társadalom- és kultúratudományok egy központi fogalmának genézise, inflálódása és problémái,” Regio 4: 3–33 (2007). About the dynamics of ethnicity in and through the categories of minority and majority (Hungarian, Romanian) and their asymmetrical worlds, using the example of Cluj, see Rogers Brubaker, Margit Feischmidt, Jon Fox, and Liana Grancea, Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 207–238.

8. Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

9. These labels were the names of today's Slovakia and Voivodina in the pre-1920 and interwar Hungary.

10. On the different interpretations of home and homeland, see Nándor Bárdi, Otthon és haza: Tanulmányok a romániai magyar kisebbségek történetéről (Csíkszereda: Pro Print, 2013), 9–18.

11. Cf. the idea of Arendt, where citizenship is “the right to rights”; Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Meridian Books, 1951), 294.

12. Bjorn Thomassen, “The Uses and Meaning of Liminality,” International Political Anthropology 2(1): 5–27 (2009).

13. For more detail, see Attila Z. Papp, “Ways of Interpretation of Hungarian-American Ethnic-Based Public Life and Identity,” in Pál Hatos and Attila Novák, eds., Between Minority and Majority: Hungarian and Jewish / Israeli Ethnical and Cultural Experiences in Recent Centuries (Budapest: Balassi Intézet, 2013), 228–59.

14. Attila Z. Papp, “Az etnocentrizmus szerkezete kisebbségben — a fókuszcsoportos beszélgetések alapján,” in Valér Veres and Attila Z. Papp, eds., Szociológiai mintázatok: Erdélyi magyarok a Kárpát Panel vizsgálatai alapján (Kolozsvár: Nemzeti Kisebbségkutató Intézet and Max Weber Társadalomkutatásért Alapítvány, 2012), 79–116.

15. Rogers Brubaker, Ethnicity Without Groups (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).

16. In contrast, the majority categories (Romanian, Serb) indicate both citizenship and ethnic belonging; Brubaker et al., Nationalist Politics, 231–37.

17. Peter J. Spiro, “Accepting (and Protecting) Dual Citizenship for Transborder Minorities,” in Rainer Bauböck, ed., Dual Citizenship for Transborder Minorities? How To Respond For The Hungarian-Slovak Tip-For-Tat? (Badia Fiesolana: European University Institute, 2010), 7–8.

18. Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).

19. Max Weber, Economy and Society (Oakland: University of California Press, 1978).

20. The Hungarian Card is issued under the “Status Law” (2001), and it can be provided to ethnic Hungarians living abroad.

21. The shame associated with the Romanian passport was experienced by (ethnic) Romanians as well. Brubaker et al. claim in their book on Cluj that citizenship in practice often receives a stigma; see Brubaker et al., Nationalist Politics, 321–26.

22. The referendum question was: “Do you want the Parliament to pass an act allowing Hungarian citizenship with preferential naturalization to be granted to those, at their request, who claim to have Hungarian nationality, do not live in Hungary and are not Hungarian citizens, and who prove their Hungarian nationality by means of a ‘Hungarian identity card’ issued pursuant to Article 19 of Act LXII/2001 or in another way to be determined by the law which is to be passed?” The referendum was not valid. See the Hungarian National Election Office webpage: http://valasztas.hu/en/ovi/197/197_0.html (accessed 18 Nov. 2016). It was clear during the campaign that the stake of the referendum was not the preferential naturalization itself but inner political struggles.

23. The concept of “signs of belonging” was introduced by Goffman. See Erving Goffman, Relations in Public (New York: Basic Books, 1971).

24. A document that intends to lay the foundation of the new social order after 2010 elections: Office of National Assembly: The Programme of National Cooperation (May 2010), http://www-archiv.parlament.hu/irom39/00047/00047_e.pdf. (accessed 19 Nov. 2016).

25. Szekler jokes are a special genre of Hungarian joke-lore. These jokes depict Szekler men as prudent, patient clever, and inventive. For other characteristics of Szeklers, see Andy Hockley: Who are the Székely? (2.) (February 2013) http://szekely.blogspot.hu/2013/02/who-are-szekely-2.html (accessed 5 Nov. 2016). One of the famous popular sayings—“Beer is not a drink, a woman is not a man, and a bear is not a toy”— has been publicly used by a prominent politician of the Hungarian ruling party, and it provoked a great dispute because of its inherent sexism.

26. The Szekler language is a Hungarian dialect with a special pronunciation.

27. Marcel Mauss, The Gift (London: Routledge, 2002).

28. See The Fundamental Law of Hungary, Article D (April 2011), http://www.kormany.hu/download/e/02/00000/The%20New%20Fundamental%20Law%20of%20Hungary.pdf. (accessed 18 Nov. 2016).

29. The referendum question was: “Do you want the European Union to be entitled to prescribe the mandatory settlement of non-Hungarian citizens in Hungary without the consent of the National Assembly?” See the Hungarian National Election Office webpage: National Referendum 2016 (October 2016), http://valasztas.hu/en/ref2016/index.html (accessed 2 Nov. 2016). The ruling party (Fidesz) campaigned for the No vote.

30. https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/09/13/hungarys-xenophobic-anti-migrant-campaign. Surveys carried out in Oct. 2016 reveal that, “Since it has been assessed, xenophobia in Hungary has never been as high as it is today.” See Christian Keszthelyi, Xenophobia Skyrocketing in Hungary, Surveys Reveal, (November 2016), http://bbj.hu/budapest/xenophobia-skyrocketing-in-hungary-surveys-reveal_124920 (accessed 18 Nov. 2016), first paragraph.

31. There might be a trickster logic traceable here as well, since there are no official data available. Dual citizens could vote by mail, but they had to register beforehand. According to estimates, 38–40% of eligible voters registered, and (here we do have official data) 47% of those actually casted a vote. See the Hungarian National Election Office webpage: National Referendum 2016 (October 2016), http://valasztas.hu//en/ref2016/481/481_0_index.html. (accessed 2 Nov. 2016).

32. Despite the referendum not being valid because of low turnout, the prime minister has initiated the changing of the Constitution, based on the results of the referendum. See Katya Adler, Hungary PM Claims EU Migrant Quota Referendum Victory (October 2016), http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37528325 (accessed 6 Nov. 2016).