Nation-Building and Contested Identities: Romanian & Hungarian ...

IRINA CULICIn fact, the only chance for a Romanian to learn the Hungarian languagein an organized way is at the Faculty of Letters, as a foreign language. Naturally,one could argue that Romanians might choose to speak anotherforeign language than Hungarian, which could be of more use in many circumstances,while the Hungarians are “forced” to learn Romanian. Thisargument is frail, and one can cite many counter-examples of Hungarians,or persons belonging to other ethnic minorities, who learned Romanianalong with their mother tongue, and who were not impeded by this fact inlearning another foreign language. 42Another component of this resource – i.e., Hungarian nationality –for the Hungarians in Romania is double socialization. Among otherthings, this comprises access to double sets of networks of various sorts –in the state where they live, in the external homeland (that is, networks ofRomanian citizens, and of Hungarian citizens respectively), and their localRomanian and Hungarian networks. Again, the situation of the Romaniansis not symmetric. Even if they enter networks of Hungarians inRomania (without necessarily speaking Hungarian), their access to networksof Hungarians in Hungary is severely limited.The analysis may be continued by discussing several other components.I believe that the moral is at hand for everyone and may constitutea conclusion for the entire study. Nations, nationalities, identities are constructedand reproduced through schemes of perception and classification.Their social reality is constantly actuated as both means and resultsof struggles between actors aiming at imposing a particular worldview andseeking to legitimize their own positions. Once these processes are objectified,the picture becomes clear, and it is at anyone’s disposal to enjoy hisor her nationality in a way that represents a positive sum game for each ofthe actors involved.NOTES1Fredrik Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of CultureDifference (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1969).2See Katherine Verdery, “Whither ‘Nation’ and ‘Nationalism’?” Daedalus 122(Summer 1993), p. 43; Rogers Brubaker, “Immigration, Citizenship and theNation-State in France and Germany: A Comparative Historical Analysis” inBrian Turner and Peter Hamilton, eds., Citizenship: Critical Concepts, vol. 2(London: Routledge, 1994), p. 311, and Rogers Brubaker, NationalismReframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 23-54.242