Social exclusion, ethnic political mobilization, and roma minority self-governance in hungary

East Central Europe

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 53-73

  Molnár, Emilia ^a   Schafft, Kai A ^a  

^a NONE   (Hungary)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 49149106164     PISSN: 00943037     EISSN: 18763308     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/187633003X00036     Document Type: Review

References (36)

1. M. Shucksmith and P. Chapman. ’Rural Development and Social Exclusion,’ Sociologia Ruralis, Vol. 38, No. 2 (1998), pp. 225-242
2. P. Bourdieu, ’The Forms of Capital,’ in J. G. Richardson (ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (New York: Greenwood Press, 1985), pp. 241-258
3. R. D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993)
4. R. D. Putnam, Bowling Alone (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000)
5. A. Portes, ’Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology,’ Annual Review of Sociology, 1998, no. 24 pp. 1-24
6. A. Portes and J. Sensenbrenner, ’Embeddedness and Immigration: Notes on the Social Determinants of Economic Action,’ American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 98 (1998), pp. 1320-1350
7. M. Woolcock, ’Social Capital and Economic Development: Towards a Theoretical Synthesis and Policy Framework,’ Theory and Society, Vol. 27 (1998), pp. 151-208
8. M. Woolcock and D. Narayan, ’Social Capital: Implications for Development Theory, Research, and Policy,’ World Bank Research Observer, Vol. 15, no. 2 (2000)
9. J. Coleman, Fouidations of Social Theory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990)
10. R. Putnam, Making Democracy Work
11. On the role of social networks in obtaining housing, see for example, the work of J. Bodnár and J. Böröcz, ’Housing Advantages for the Better Connected? Institutional Segmentation, Settlement Type and Social Network Effects in Hungary’s Late State Socialist Housing Inequalities,’ Social Forces, Vol. 76 (1998), pp. 1275-1304. For studies on interhousehold exchange, informal networks of affiliation and livelihood strategies
12. see E. Sik, ’Reciprocal Exchange of Labor in Hungary’ in R. E. Pahl (ed.), On Work: Historical, Comparative and Theoretical Approaches, (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988), pp. 527-547
13. See also F. Albert and B. Dávid, ’About Friends,’ in T. Kolosi, I. Gy. Tóth, and Gy. Vukovich, (eds.), Social Report 1998, Budapest: TÁRKI, 1999, pp. 270-289
14. See also D. Brown and L. Kulcsár, ’Household Economic Behavior in Post-Socialist Rural Hungary,’ Rural Soctology, Vol. 66 (2001), pp. 157-180. Wallace in another work examined how ethnic and kinship ties are used by cross-border small traders to mediate business risk
15. C. Wallace ’Investing (cont. from previous page) in Social Capital: The Case of Small Scale, Cross-Border Traders in Post-Communist Central Europe,’ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 23 (1999), pp. 751-770. Several studies also examined how norms and networks affect inter-ethnic relations. For example, Schafft and Brown argued that Roma selfgovernments possessed higher capacity in communities with higher inter- and intra-ethnic solidarity
16. K. Schafft and D. Brown, ’Social Capital and Grassroots Development: The Case of Roma Self-Governance in Hungary,’ Social Problems, 47, no. 2 (2000), pp. 201-219 Göncz and Geskó similarly pointed out that cooperative negotiations between municipal governments and Roma local minority self-governments are best facilitated through structured efforts to build social networks and norms of trust and reciprocity between groups
17. K. Göncz and S. Geskó, ’Ethnic Minorities in Hungary: Democracy and Conflict Resolution,’ The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 552, (1997) pp. 28-39
18. B. Fine, Social Capital Versus Social Theory (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 98
19. A. Walker and C. Walker (eds.), Britain Divided: The Growth of Social Exclusion in the 1980s and 1990s (London: Child Poverity Action Group, 1997), p. 8
20. M. Shucksmith and P. Chapman, ’Rural Development and Social Exclusion
21. D. Byrnfl Social Exclusion (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1999)
22. M. Shucksmith, ’History Meets Biography: Processes of Change and Social Exclusion in Rural Areas.’ Paper given at Queen’s University, Belfast, February 2001, at the conference organized by The Arkleton Institute for Rural Development Research on ’Exclusion Zones: Inadequate Resources and Civic Rights in Rural Areas.’
23. Gy. Réti, ’Hungary and the Problem of National Minorities,’ The Hungarian Quarterly, Vol. 36 (1995), No. 139, pp. 70-77
24. By posing cultural autonomy as its central organizing principle, the legislation was notable for its break with previous state responses to minorities in general and Roma in particular which had been geared explicitly or implicitly toward social and cultural assimilation. Hence, ideally the law could work to enhance minority cultural autonomy while simultaneously strengthening minority integration into existing political structures. Nearly all commentators, however, find that the results so far have fallen far short of the ideal. See e.g. M. Kovats, ’Minority rights and Roma politics in Hungary,’ in K. Cordell (ed.), Ethnicity and Democratisation in the New Europe (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 145-156
25. Hungarian National Assembly. ’Act LXXVII of 1993 on the Rights of National and Ethnic Minorities,’ Budapest: Parliament of the Republic of Hungary, 1993
26. As M. Kovats (’Minority rights and Roma politics in Hungary,’ p. 147) has pointed out: "since the ’change of system’ in the late 1980s, Hungary has shown its commitment to regional stability by concluding treaties with neighbouring states, each of which provides provisions for minority protection (providing) Hungarian ministers with (moral as well as real) authority to examine the activities of other, sovereign governments. It does not harm a government’s standing at home, or elsewhere in Europe, if they can point out the failings of neighbouring regimes with whom they are in competition for early accession to supranational institutions."
27. I. Riba, ’Minority Self-Governments in Hungary,’ The Hungariarz Quarterly, Vol. 155 (1999), pp. 80-90. For an excellent discussion of the legal and political complexities of institutionalizing ethnic minority political representation in the post-socialist East European context
28. see also A. L. Pap, ’Ethnicity and Politics: Definition and Scope,’ East Central Europe/L’Europe du Centre Est, Vol. 28, part 2 (2001), pp. 41-68. As Pap argues: "It is pointless having minority self-governments of the Hungarian type if the requirements of participation leave procedural options wide open to abuse limited only by political culttre." (p. 67) This is our position exactly
29. Despite the tremendous ethnic, cultural, and linguistic variation across different Roma groups, the Roma are often erroneously treated as an ethnically homogeneous population, constituting "one people with a number of fixed characteristics." (W. Willems, ’Ethnicity as a Death-Trap: The History of Gypsy Studies,’ in Gypsies and other Itinerant Groups, ed. L. Lucassen, W. Willems, and A. Cottaar (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), p. 19).In Hungary, there are three main ethnic subgroups. The Romungro make up about 70 percent of Hungarian Roma population, and speak Hungarian as their mother tongue. The Olah comprise about 20 percent and speak various Romani dialects. The Beas make up about 10 percent of the Roma population and speak a Romanian dialect
30. See e.g.: D. Kenrick, Historical Dictionary of the Gypsies (Romanies) (Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, 1997)
31. and M. Stewart, Time of the Gypsies (Boulder: Westview, 1997)
32. K: A. Schafft and D. L. Brown; ’Social Capital and Grassroots Development.’
33. Elsewhere we argued that even Roma self-government programming identified by Roma leaders as ’cultural’ in nature frequently has clear welfare roles as well, further bringing into question whether most Roma self-government activities are defined by their ’cultura’ or ’welfare’ roles. See for details: E. Molnár and K. A. Schafft, ’A helyi roma/ciginy kisebbségi Önkormányzatok tevékenysége és céljai Magyirorszádgon 2000-2001.’ [The activities and aims of Roma/Gypsy local minority self-governments 2000-2001], Szocíológiai Szemle, Vol. 13, no. 1 (2003), pp. 79-99
34. Although Hungary’s overall population has been aging and in decline since the late 1970s, Hungary’s Roma population increased by over 50 percent between 1971 and 1993. See: Z. Barany, The Ecast Europeara Gypsies: Regime Change, Marginality and Ethnopolitics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)
35. P. M. Blau, ’Multilevel Structural Analysis,’ Social Networks, Vol. 15, (1993), pp. 201 -215
36. J. Szalai, ’Conflicting Struggles for Recognition: Clashing Interests of Gender and Ethnicity in Contemporary Hungary,’ in B. Hobson (ed.), Recognition Struggles and Social Movements: Contested Identities, Agency, and Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 380’-432