Nation-Building and Contested Identities: Romanian & Hungarian ...

IRINA CULICthe protection of their interests and provision of particular rights. Yet,these interests are expressed and represented by the political and culturalelites of the Hungarian minority in Romania (Transylvania). Obviously,there is a homology between the politics pursued by Budapest and thedynamics of the Hungarian minority elite in Romania. Thus, the “civic”identity of the Hungarians in Romania is substantially influenced by thepositions taken by the Romanian state in devising and implementing legislationwith respect to national minorities, local administration, andeducation; by the positions taken by the Hungarian state expressed inthe degree and form of responsibility assumed for the ethnonational kinabroad; and by the relations between the two states. The Hungarians inRomania tend to be dissatisfied and frustrated by their membership inthe Romanian polity, as the data in Table 1 suggests.TABLE 1. Degrees of agreement with the following statement: “I would ratherbe a Romanian citizen than a citizen of any other country”.RomaniansHungariansFully agree 57.2% 21.5%Rather agree 19.8% 21.1%Rather disagree 14.1% 22.7%Fully disagree 5.6% 29.6%Don’t know 3.3% 5.1%TOTAL 100% 100%Source: Irina Culic, István Horváth and Marius Lazãr, Ethnobarometer: Interethnic Relationsin Romania (Cluj-Napoca: Research Center for Interethnic Relations – CCRIT,2000). Random multi-cluster multi-stratified samples for the Romanian population,N=1253 and the Hungarian population, N=798. In the national weighted sample, theHungarians were 10 times over-represented, and the Romanians from Szeklerland were57 times over-represented. 22There are several reasons behind these responses. However, theHungarians’ institutional situation as a national minority in Romania isonly a minor reason. The Hungarians in Romania currently enjoy mostcultural rights. 23 In Marshall’s terms of citizenship, 24 Hungarians enjoythe same membership in the political community as Romanians, and theireconomic situation is not different from that of the Romanians. 25 Anyactual disadvantage arises as a result of contextual factors such as ethnicdistribution in a specific locality, but this holds true for Romanians aswell. 26 There are more important reasons, in my opinion, that account forthe Hungarians’ dissatisfaction with Romanian citizenship. The frustratingexperience of Hungarians traveling abroad as Romanian citizens –identified, labeled and treated as “Romanians” – is particularly illustra-232