Conflicting Conceptualisations of Europeanisation: HUNGARY Country Report
by Umut Korkut | Glasgow Caledonian University
This report reviews the unfolding of the future of Europe and external migration related narratives in Hungary, and the liberal/conservative dilemmas that Hungarian politicians proposed since 2015. Its particular scope is the Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s speeches and how they were quoted by or referred to in the Hungarian media. The abrupt increase in the number of irregular migrant arrivals to Hungary prepared the conditions for Orbán to project the course that he foresaw for the conservative transformation for Hungary to transform Europe. After his victory in 2010 and 2014 at Hungarian general elections, Orbán presented his country as the vanguard for the conservative transformation that Europe also needed. In this respect, external migration from those countries where Islam was the majority religion presented Orbán the context whereby he could project the historical other for Europe as the future danger. The report is empirically focused first and foremost on Viktor Orbán’s speeches regarding external migration and Europe; introduce quotations from 25 speeches extracted from mostly Orbán’s as well as other Fidesz politicians. The report also looks at the conservative (Magyar Hírlap), centrist (hvg.hu), and liberal (Népszava) media outlets in Hungary in order to see how they have embedded narratives, slogans and tropes from these speeches.
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