Hungary’s illiberal border politics and the exploitation of social, spatial and temporal distinctions

Abstract

Previous research on Hungarian right-wing populism has documented how the present government has identified different groups and individuals as threats to innate national interests and values, drawing distinctions between the ‘nation’, illegal migrants, non-heteronormative persons, liberal enemies in Brussels, George Soros and others. At the same time, the Orbán government has exploited the country’s internal divisions which, for example, reflect long-standing contestations between liberal and conservative understandings of national identity and purpose. Employing a critical border studies perspective, this article explores Hungary’s illiberal practices of socio-cultural, spatial and temporal border-making. These are central to Hungary’s project of ‘illiberal democracy’ and the forging of a political environment that marginalizes alternative viewpoints and that extends into the organization of civil society and everyday life. European dimensions of the Hungarian regime’s border politics are also briefly discussed in terms of evoking liberal-conservative divides and Hungary’s claims for greater national recognition as a defender of Europe’s Christian heritage. In the concluding section, the potential significance of Hungarian illiberal politics in terms of an erosion of social cohesion both nationally and within the European Union will be considered.

A union in distress: Contested spatial imaginations, narratives and practices of European (dis)integration

“…With the contributions of this special issue, we take the opportunity to shed a more nuanced light on examples of imaginations, narratives and practices of European (dis)integration, with a particular focus on the entanglements and different shades of Europe-related imaginations. We open the debate with an article by James W Scott (2023), in which the function of narratives for the powerful implementation of political orientation is illustrated throughout the text. Using the example of Hungary’s recent politics within the EU and beyond, Scott describes how narratives of redrawing from the EU and establishing one’s own identity have been entangled with dominant political discourses on East–West differences, the position of Eastern Europe in general and particularly with an imagination of Illiberal Eastness.…”