From national minority to diaspora: Hungarians in Romania, 2000-2015. Matters of population, education, and territory

The paper investigates the transformation of the project of a parallel Hungarian society in Romania during the last fifteen years through the analytical lens offered by the pair concepts of diaspora and national minority. The diaspora is externally oriented towards the kinstate, aiming at acquiring its active support and advocacy in the international arena, maintaining the option to “return”, including the right to non‐residential dual citizenship. The national minority is internally oriented as a mobilized political actor on the national scene, struggling for cultural rights, territorial autonomy, and special representation in their native country. Scrutinizing the interaction between Hungarian state’s national policy, Hungarian minority participation in government in Romania, civic and cultural organisation at various local levels, and the international legal regime of minority recognition, the paper shows the tensioned living with both these postures of Hungarians in Romania. It starts with the issue of population, where sheer size, territorial distribution, and the strength of ethno‐cultural identification affect the force and legitimacy of the claims that Hungarians may advance on the national political scene, and determine the chance of maintaining a Hungarian way of life. From here it zooms into the politics of higher education in the Hungarians language in Romania, and the political life of the notion of diaspora for Hungarians in Romania.

Activation (Works) without mobility, labour and structural vulnerability in neo-liberalising Slovakia

This paper explores how Roma in eastern Slovakia navigate their formal unemployment and manage their income generating strategies in the context of state policies of activation, economic crisis and neo liberal workfare reforms. It examines ethnographically the concept of ‘activation’ (to) work against the backdrop of increasing immobilities faced by long term unemployed Roma in Slovakia. Based on anthropological fieldwork in Eastern Slovakia, the present paper will be situated within the larger processes of re-drawing lines of economic precariousness, formal/informal distinctions, insecurity, and politics of deservingness and moral citizenship in the transforming modes of governing minorities in Slovakia.

Being officially categorized as long term unemployed, and even ‘unemployable’ in public discourses in Slovakia, most Roma combine various precarious economic strategies, welfare and state workfare ‘activation’ programmes in Slovakia and project their hopes to dreams associated with labour migration. This paper interrogates ethnographically some normative assumptions underlying discourses surrounding policies targeting longCterm unemployed in Slovakia, which evolve around their alleged ‘activity’ and ‘inactivity’. More specifically, it explores how ideologies and policies of labour activation operate on various scales and in everyday practices of those who are implementing them and those who are targeted by these.

The Process of Readmission and Social integration of Returnees in Serbia

Readmission policy serves as an instrument to return migrants and asylum seekers from European countries to countries of origin, in this particular case, Serbia.

This research focuses on the problem of Roma migration from Serbia to EU countries and their deportation back to Serbia after the Readmission Agreement (YEAR). After the signing of the readmission agreements and the first returnees arrived, a systematic reintegration of the Roma population in Serbia began, along with the recognition of Roma as a national minority.

The Roma communities in Serbia are concerned by the issues of chronic poverty, high unemployment, stereotypes and discrimination, lower level of education and the alarmingly low levels of health care for the Roma. This situation indicates the need to improve their social status at both the regional and the national levels.

This paper presents a descriptive analysis of the conditions of readmission and subsequent integration of Roma returnees in Serbia, covering the period up to October 2011.

The research combines different methodologies of data gathering and analysis and includes statistical data and official records, opinion polling and a sample of 120 Roma returning to Serbia. Meetings and interviews were conducted with representatives of the Roma population, local institutions and NGOs.

Demographic Convergence: How the Demographic Shifts are Transforming the Governments

This research studies demographic changes, tendencies and implications and how they have had an impact upon governance structures in the countries of Southeast Europe, with particular focus on Macedonia. It examines the current demographic situation in Macedonia, a particular case that has recently undergone important demographic changes and where different ethnic communities live next to each other. The report considers the demographic changes of recent years and their policy implications. It also highlights the degree to which demographic changes have affected governance structures.