The political aspects of solidarity mobilizations in the context of shrinking civil society during the first wave of COVID-19

ABSTRACT

This paper contributes to the literature on solidarity mobilizations and the framings of social and political change in the context of the shrinking welfare state, de-democratization, and repressive state policies towards civil society. These issues are explored through the lens of interview-based research on Hungarian solidarity initiatives that emerged in response to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic between March and June 2020. We specifically look at the ways in which volunteers and activists engaged in solidarity activities associated with healthcare, care-work, and education; accounted for their aspirations; conceptualized social responsibility; and reflected on the crisis management of the state. We found that newly emerging grassroots actors reinforced the documented trend of depoliticization in civil society. Although most respondents formulated a depoliticizing narrative, they did offer interpretations of their public role and collective action, values, and responsibilities, and pronounced a desire for social change. Nevertheless, to account for these framings, we need to move beyond the binary understanding of politics in solidarity and civil society research.

KEYWORDS:

• Civil society
• de-democratization
• depoliticization
• Hungary
• solidarity

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the members of the research group who worked with us on the ‘Solidarity during the Covid 19 epidemic’ project (Judit Acsádi, Judit Durst, Domonkos Sik, Ildikó Zakariás, and Csilla Zsigmond), especially to Zsuzsa Sütő and Violetta Zentai. We thank the Center for Social Sciences (MTA) for financial support and our colleagues who encouraged our thinking on the topic: Márton Gerő, Szabina Kerényi, Zsolt Körtvélyesi, Ágnes Kövér van Til, Attila Melegh, Beáta Nagy, Attila Papp Z, Ferenc Péterfi, Andrea Szabó, and three anonymous reviewers.

The Institutional Ethical Board of the ELKH Center for Social sciences found that the research is compliant with the ethics principle of the institution (decision no. FOIG-1/130-13/2022).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Life expectancy is 75.7 years in Hungary in contrast to the EU average of 80.6.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Margit Feischmidt

Margit Feischmidt is research professor at the Center for Social Sciences, Budapest, where she leads the Department for Sociology and Anthropology in the Institute for Minority Studies. She is the editor in chief of Intersections. East European Journal of Society and Politics and teaches as a full professor at the Institute for Communication and Media Studies, University of Pécs. Her most recent edited book (coeditors Ludger Pries and Celine Cantat) is on civic forms of solidarity (Refugee Protection and Civil Society in Europe, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

Eszter Neumann

Eszter Neumann is a research fellow at the Institute for Minority Studies in the Center for Social Sciences, Budapest, Hungary. She is a sociologist of education and her main research interests lie the area of policy sociology, the sociology of expertise and policy enactment in schools. Her current research concerns populist and neoconservative education policy-making. She is the convenor of the Sociologies of education network of the European Education Research Association.