HUNGARY: Fond Only Of Hungarians

By Zoltán Dujisin Reprint | | Print |

Zoltán Dujisin

BUDAPEST, Mar 23 2007 (IPS) - Hungarians are growing increasingly xenophobic – even towards non-existing peoples – a study by a sociology institute shows.

Many Hungarians feel immigration has a negative impact on the country, even though official surveys indicate the country’s population decline cannot be stopped otherwise.

The study, carried out by the Budapest-based Tarki sociological institute asked Hungarians which minority groups should be allowed to settle in Hungary, and under which circumstances.

It concluded that, even though Hungary is not exposed to particularly severe migratory pressures, immigration of other ethnic groups into the country is opposed by a growing majority of the population.

Hungary only has one large city, its capital Budapest, where most migrants settle. Whereas mild conservatism prevails in the countryside and liberal values thrive in Budapest, the capital is also home to the largest percentage of right-wing extremists in the country.

Tarki’s survey not only confirms that one quarter of Hungary is openly xenophobic; it also indicates that latent xenophobia is on the rise.

“Compared to last year xenophobia increased only in its latent form, which refers to seemingly realist people that are ready to allow foreigners to come to Hungary, but on a second question reject all groups that are already here,” research supervisor Endre Sik told IPS.

In the longer term, Sik sees the rise in xenophobia as a combination of historical factors and Hungary’s sudden international exposure after socialist isolation in which travel and migration were regulated.

The 10-million country’s ethnic composition remains fairly homogeneous, with ethnic Hungarians constituting 94 percent of the population.

In all 95 percent of the population uses Hungarian as its mother tongue, a Finno-Ugric and non-Indo-European language that sets the country apart from its seven, mostly Slavic neighbours.

Hungary saw the gradual emergence of nationalism and xenophobia with the collapse of state socialism in 1989. “With it came free speech, unemployment, fear, and the feeling of lacking a safe future,” Sik told IPS.

According to the survey, ethnic groups that have settled in Hungary since then, such as Chinese, Arabs, Russians and Romanians, are especially unwelcome.

Dislike for Romanians springs from historical struggles between the two countries over the territory of Transylvania, for long part of the Hungarian Kingdom but since the end of World War I under Romanian administration.

The western Romanian region includes a 1.5 million community of ethnic Hungarians whose legal status and minority rights have been a source of recurrent conflict between the two neighbours.

Other neighbouring countries, such as Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine, are also home to substantial ethnic-Hungarian minorities, and the public in Hungary is sensitive and divided over their fate.

Hungarian politicians on the right frequently play the ‘minorities card’ and many see this as contributing to nationalist xenophobia in the entire region. Diplomatic conflicts with neighbouring countries have been all but rare in post-socialist Hungary.

As a result, most Hungarians would only allow members of their kin, and allegedly endangered communities abroad to settle and work in the country.

What surprised sociologists and the media alike is Hungarians’ strong opposition to the presence in their country of “Piresians”, a fictitious ethnic group created by the Tarki institute to test xenophobia.

“Piresians get the best jobs, and their goal is to occupy everything here and push Hungarians away. In the meantime, they pretend they don’t exist, as if they had been invented,” left-wing daily Népszabadság wrote in a mockery of average Hungarian attitudes.

“How do you recognise them?” goes on the daily. “You can be sure he is a Piresian if he gets a parking place before you, if he gets the job you wanted, or if he gets state aid before you do.”

The fictitious group had been included in past surveys; only this year researchers concluded that opposition to their ‘presence’ in Hungary grew from 59 percent last year to 68 percent this year.

Asylum seekers are also left in a tight spot by respondents. Only 6 percent of those surveyed believe any refugee should be allowed into the country, and 27 percent oppose their entry regardless of origin and specific circumstances.

According to the study, establishing contact with some of the minority groups could prove helpful, as respondents who claimed to have homosexuals or asylum seekers among their acquaintances tended to show more tolerance towards them.

But that was not always the case: prejudices against the Roma, a large and centuries-old minority in Central and Eastern Europe, hold true even for many who claim to be in regular contact with them.

The results would place Hungary among those countries in Europe that more strongly reject immigration, together with the likes of Greece, Poland, Austria and the Czech Republic.

“What’s surprising about the results when comparing to the other countries is that in everyday life in Hungary we don’t feel militant xenophobia,” Sik told IPS.