Nation-Building and Contested Identities - MEK

IRINA CULICNotably, this is how the Hungarians answered the question “What isthe territory that you consider your country?” 36 : Romania 68.0%, Transylvania21.0%, the place where I live 3.0%, Hungary 2.0%, no answer 5.0%.It is significant that two-thirds of the Hungarians in Transylvania perceivethe whole of Romania as their country, and in this way they implicitlyassert their loyalty towards the Romanian state.ConclusionsThere are several components of the construction of national identity thatcan be clarified by an empirical research on the inter-ethnic relations inRomania. 37 First, members of both majority and minority national groupshave illusory expectations of the other. Hungarians expect Romanians toacknowledge their existence as a national minority. Moreover, they oftenexpect them to have the same understanding of a minority status. This isnot a realistic assumption. Most Romanians rarely have the chance to getfamiliarized with the cultural peculiarities of a minority, or with the particularneeds of a person belonging to a minority group. Most often this isexplainable by their objective position within the social space. 38 Romaniansmay lack awareness or sensitivity with regard to Hungarian differencesand, consequently, to their different problems and demands, due tothe particular setting of their interaction. 39 I would suggest that the lack ofknowledge and familiarity with the Hungarian life-world on the part of theRomanians is often the main cause of misunderstanding and misinterpretationof their political requests, when the symbolic connotations areeither ignored or overestimated. 40 This lack of knowledge also accountsfor the unfounded Romanian expectation that Hungarians should feel andrelate to institutions, processes and symbols in a similar way.Second, the distribution of ethnic groups in a locality (and a region)is a crucial explanatory variable. It is of crucial importance, whether anethnic community represents a strong majority, a majority, or is relativelyequal to the other ethnic group in a locality. 41 Thus, there are divergentframeworks of interaction and familiarization with the other, and also variousopportunities of dissension, tension and conflict. These conditionsalso shape the patterns of real and perceived dominance, whether symbolicor other.Borrowing a concept from economics, one could conceive of citizenshipin a nation-state as a public good. Citizenship is characterized by theindivisibility of production and consumption, by non-excludability (no onecan be prevented from enjoying it), and it is not subject to crowding (i.e.,non-rivalness). Practically, there is no formal way by which anyone, born ina certain country from parents who are citizens of that country, could be240