Beyond the border fence: The emergence of Hungary’s contemporary bordering regime

Introduction

The European Union (EU)’s political identity is closely tied to Europe’s practical and symbolic debordering in the interests of integration and peaceful co-existence. Nevertheless, borders and their collective representations continue to exercise a powerful influence on the constitution of "EU-Europe". They give sustenance to notions of a shared European history but also serve as powerful markers of national and local identity. This is particularly visible in the post-Cold War context of eastward enlargements where historical memories and cultural narratives have re-emerged as important conditioning factors of Europeanization.

Elungary, as dominated by the present national-conservative government, is an excellent example of how borders and national identity politics serve as a (geo)political resource. Since 2015 this has involved, among others, the installation of barbed wire fences and internment camps (euphemistically termed “transit zones”) for refugees along its border with Serbia and Croatia (Pap and Remenyi, 2017). Nevertheless, the political use of borders goes beyond references to the fences that now skirt Hungary's southern borders. In fact, the physical border and the biopolitical hardware that is in operation to safeguard Hungary’s sovereignty are only part of more comprehensive border-making policies that the present Hungarian government has actively pursued since returning to power in 2010.

It is abundantly clear that Hungary’s border politics serve an important instrumental role in consolidating the power and authority of the current conservative government. However, above and beyond this, Hungary’s politics of borders are linked to an emphatic re-assertion of national identity and sovereignty as well as the imposition of a new political reality in which liberalism and its advocates are marginalized. Indeed, the instrumental use of physical borders and fences is part and parcel of a bordering regime that aims to make hegemonic specific national conservative ideologies and understandings of “Europe”. Border politics are thus often more than a case of securitizing or controlling the mobility of certain groups or individuals, they are part of a deeper "politics of life” aimed at norming the public sphere and everyday life according to specific political and ideological aims.

As will be discussed below, since Fidesz’s massive electoral win of 2010, this regime has operated on a number of principles. At one level, European policies of cross-border cooperation have been re-appropriated in the pursuit of ethnopolitical goals, strengthening the cohesion of Hungary as a nation outside its territorial borders. However, at another level we can identity a more domestically targeted principle that involves the securitization of asylum seekers and the social marginalization of institutions, groups, individuals and ideas that do not conform to the national conservative vision championed by the government. The bordering regime thus transfers the logic of fences and walls to Hungarian society as well, purposely creating divisions within society in order to secure ideological hegemony. As such, the bordering regime also has certain biopolitical qualities to the extent that it attempts to control visibility in the public sphere and negate a sense of political life based on a plurality of ideas and needs

This chapter begins with a theoretical elaboration of the concept of border regime and its appropriation as an analytical framework. Discussion then proceeds with general discussion of links between Hungarian border politics and the present government's conservative nation-building project. This is followed by a brief analysis of Hungary’s emerging bordering regime based on three examples: (1) The implementation of an ethnopolitical and thus extraterritorial notion of nation; (2) processes of social bordering in order to norm the public sphere and create divisions between "national” and "opposition” ways of thinking and (3) the securitization of refugees and migrants. The research that informs this essay is based on a review of media sources, academic and policy-focused literature. Attention will also be devoted to the Hungarian government’s politics of borders and contestations of the EU within the context of the so-called refugee crisis and wider debates regarding immigration and asylum. In concluding, questions regarding the consequences of this bordering regime within a wider European context will be addressed.