Giving Ethnic Diversity its Spatial and Temporal Meaning – Examples from Slovakia

Abstract

Giving Ethnic Diversity its Spatial and Temporal Meaning-Examples from Slovakia. Ethnic diversity represents one of the most accurate ways of exploring regional identity, with its temporal and spatial variations. In the methodological framework of emerging diversity studies, this paper approached the elementary forms of ethnic diversity change in regions of Slovakia in 1880-2011 using census data and simple, yet expressive and exact, diversification indices and intercensal change. The regions of Slovakia are shown in a broad timespace analysis, with data adapted to one regional structure. Although ethnic diversity is only a minor part of a superdiversity approach and, as such, is insufficient to express the identity of a region and its population, historical and spatial data can work to provide a useful overview for the broader social analysis of a region.

Health Disparities and Ethnic Classification in Hungary

“…The Hungarian definition of ethnicity consists primarily of social and cultural elements and is based less on objective attributes and physical traits such as, for example, the Anglo-Saxon approach (Bhopal, 2007;Cormack et al, 2019). While similar to the Danish, German and Slovak perspectives (Norredam, 2011;Oberndörfer, 2003;Majo, 2018), the Hungarian concept is based on personal affiliation, according to which a person belongs to a certain ethnic group -now generally called "nationality" -if they view themselves as identifying with it; thus it is a self-determinate action. The Act on Rights of National and Ethnic Minorities of 1993 states that "all groups of people who have lived in the territory of the Republic of Hungary for at least one century, who represent a numerical minority in the country's population, whose members are Hungarian citizens, who are distinguished from the rest of the population by their own languages, cultures, and traditions, who demonstrate a sense of belonging together that is aimed at preserving all of these and expressing and protecting the interests of their historical communities" (Act LXXVII of 1993 on the Rights of National and Ethnic Minorities, Chapter 1, Section 1, Subsection (2)), are officially accepted by law.…”