Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

Integration of Hungary or the Hungarians? 233
100
90
80
70
percentages
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 1999 2000 2000 2001 2001 2001
(Feb.) (Aug.) (Feb.) (Nov.) (Feb.) (Oct.) (Nov.)
all
some
none
Figure 12.3 Would you agree that Hungary should accept all refugees, or none of them, or
some of them? (%).
Source: TÁRKI, Omnibus, 1992–2001.
Controversies of the sovereignty of Hungary
Integration into NATO and into the EU has an impact on the feeling of sovereignty
and may have a negative influence on the feeling of national pride if the nation is
defined as a cultural or primordial community instead of being a political
community (Csepeli 1996). Hungary seems to be in an in-between position, which
is partly related to external impacts of new European architecture, partly to the
lack of transparency in the European integration policy in Hungary, and partly to
the influence of the ethnic Hungarian Diasporic community around and within
Hungary.
In other words, the interpretation of sovereignty and its subjects would require
public debates which answered questions of ethnic survival and movements,
European integration, globalisation, modernisation of the post-communist country
and national independence simultaneously. Due to a strongly centralised policy of
accession and the ambivalent attitudes toward migration and migrants (being of
non-ethnic Hungarians), there are suspicions regarding the social impact of EUrelated
migration (Figure 12.4).
Instruments of exclusion of migrants
Hungary, as have other states in the region, has rapidly imported the exclusionary
techniques from the EU (member states) as to how the application of asylum-seekers
or non-desirable migrants can be reduced. Moreover, it has been combined
with the rhetoric of combating illegal migration and harmonisation of laws. The
‘safe country’ principle, the rapid and simplified determination procedure in case
of manifestly unfounded requests, detention of asylum seekers, readmission