Hungarian Border Politics as an Anti-Politics of the European Union

Abstract

This essay contextualises Hungarian antipolitics of Europe as an element of radical conservative nation-building and as a reflection of the strategic use of borders. Two concrete examples of border politics will be elaborated that document shifts from EU-conformity to EU-contestation and the increasing political significance of culturalist arguments. These cases, moreover, are exemplary of the dual nature of then nationalist-conservative agenda which involves: 1) the implementation of an ethnopolitical and thus extraterritorial, de-bordered notion of nation and 2) the unilateral securitisation of Hungary’s borders, for example with Serbia, in a self-proclaimed defence of European integrity. The research that informs this essay is based on a review of media sources, academic and policy-focused literature. The essay begins with a discussion of links between Hungarian euroscepticism and the radical conservative nation-building project and continues with an analysis of post-1989 border politics with regards to the areas mentioned above. Considerable attention will be devoted to the Hungarian government’s politics of borders and contestations of European Union within the context of the so-called refugee crisis and wider debates regarding immigration and asylum.

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