"We belong to them" Narratives of Belonging, Homeland and Nationhood in Territorial and Non-territorial Minority Settings

Abstract

This dissertation explores what happens with ethnic and national identifications built on the same ethnocultural grounds, but under different socio-economic circumstances. Territorial and non- territorial minorities have traditionally been considered non-comparable because it was assumed that groups organized on different grounds were distinctively separate phenomena. In this study, the comparative method is used to throw new light on how ethnic and national identifications are constructed, negotiated, and re-constructed in territorial and non-territorial minority contexts.

The focus is on the question whether the ethnic and national identification and articulation processes of Hungarians in Slovakia and Hungarians in Sweden constitute different types of Hungarianness. Drawing on extensive interview material the empirical focus is on the interaction of self-narratives and public narratives. The project aims to challenge the notion that national minorities and diaspora communities are fundamentally different in their understanding of nationhood and their relationship to an external national homeland.

Keywords

Diaspora, Ethnicity, Nation and Nationalism, minority, narrative

Publications

Tünde Puskás (2009) ?We belong to them? Narratives of belonging, homeland and nationhood in territorial and non territorial minority settings. Brussels : P.I.E. Peter Lang.