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

IRINA CULIC36 Culic, “Between Civic and National Identity,” p. 19. Question with predeterminedanswers.37 Both quantitative research, where ethnic distribution or size of locality representindependent variables, explaining various processes and phenomena, andqualitative research, where categories employed by researchers are identified orconfirmed, and where the operation of variables is made explicit.38 For instance, the objective chance to interact with a minority person dependson the ratio of the minority population within the population of a locality.39 That is, language of communication and type of common activities, etc.40 By this, I do not intend to underestimate other important causes, such as competitionfor resources, market-positions, etc. See Verdery, “Nationalism andNational Sentiment in Post-Socialist Romania;” see also her study “Nationalism,Post-Socialism, and Space in Eastern Europe,” Social Research 63 (1996),pp. 77-86.41 Tîrgu-Mureº is the only city in Romania (except for Marghita) where the numberof Hungarian and Romanian populations is almost equal. It was also thesetting of the most important inter-ethnic conflict in post-socialist Romania, inMarch 1990.42 Moreover, linguistic and psychological studies show that the ability to usemore than one language enhances the comprehension capacities of the childrenas well as their school and social performance.246