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Political development: what, why, how? A comparative framework for Hungarian history
5-26Views:90The essay focuses on the comparative analysis of Hungarian political development before 1989–90. Instead of dealing with the 32 years since the change of regime, the author is interested in how many different interpretations of political development can be identified. The author singles out examples of political development in developed countries (for example the United States) as well as developing countries (those countries which have become decolonized in the 1960s). The starting point of the analysis is that Hungary cannot be described by either the categories used for developed countries or those that are used for developing ones. While the essay recognizes that the measure of progress at all times for Hungarian development is the example of Western development, it does not accept the approach according to which Hungarian development is a “dead-end” because it differs from Western development in many ways. The essay puts forward the hypothesis of the “normality” of Hungarian political development.
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The Controversy Surrounding the Intercountry Adoption
79-96Views:43The purpose of this article is to identify characteristics of the legal framework of intercountry
adoption. This study is specifically concerned with the international and Hungarian legislation.
In the first part, the international conventions and the Hungarian rules are presented. These
show that a considerable progress has been made in the last century in law-making.
A short statistical analysis illustrates the role of Hungary in intercountry adoption.
The final section considers possible risks and abuses in the process: exploitation, family
tracing, loss of cultural heritage, over-representation Roma children, debate over closed or
open adoption and adoption agencies.
On the basis of the results of this study, it can be concluded that the intercountry adoption
gives rise to a great debate and serious cause for complaining about abuses which weaken the
children’s rights.
This dissertation hopes to offer a comprehensive view on the advantages and challenges of
intercountry adoption. -
The characteristics of employers' (and employees') behaviour in a rural border area today, based on interviews
162-180Views:54Clichéd as it may seem, it is undeniably true that the employment situation in Hungary is bad. The profound transformation of the economy and society in 1989-1990 brought about fundamental changes in the labour market. The main features of this were the disappearance of full employment and the emergence and persistence of unemployment. The economic activity of the Hungarian population declined significantly, due to, among other things, the disappearance or restructuring of enterprises and cooperatives, the fall in production and turnover, and the more intensive use of labour under new conditions, while the number of economically inactive increased.
To avoid unemployment, people opted en masse for pensions or pension-like benefits, while young people stayed in school longer in the hope of better job prospects and, even with a much lower birth rate, the number of people still using home-based forms of childcare was essentially the same as before. After 1998, the number of inactive people fell slightly, but in 2009 the number of 15-64 year olds was still 2.6 million, about 7% (166,000) higher than in 1992. Employment fell significantly in the years following the change of regime, mainly as a result of the transformation of the economy. It reached its lowest point in 1996, when some 3.6 million people were in work, 1.3 million fewer than in the period of regime change.
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Solidarity in question – the ambivalences of helping interactions in late modern Hungary: Editorial foreword
5-9Views:49Editorial foreword
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Do we have the effect of poverty ethnicisation in the Biharkeresztes micro-region?
81-92Views:44At a research in the Biharkeresztes micro-region (conducted via semi-structured interviews) we
asked family households living in poverty. Roma households were mostly among the respondents.
We also found that that estimated number of Roma population in the settlements correlated to
the number of people working in public service. The examination of age structure diagrams at
the settlements showed that the ones the mayors estimated to have a higher Roma population,
are the younger settlements. The fact that there can be a causal relationship between these
phenomena is supported by numerous previous researches (Kemény, 2004; Molnár, 2007). These
researches pointed out the effect of poverty ethnicisation in Hungary (Ladányi – Szelényi, 2004).
Furthermore, a research conducted in 2007 at the neighbouring Szabocs-Szatmár-Bereg County
also confirmed the ethnicisation theory (Fónai et al.). The aim of this study is to examine the
possibility of poverty ethnicisation at the five settlements of the Biharkeresztes micro-region,
with the help of the implemented qualitative inquiry, previous researches, and databases from
CSO and TeIR . -
Online activities of Alzheimer Cafes in the 6 months preceding and following the coronavirus outbreak
42-64Views:77Alzheimer Cafés may play an important psychosocial supporting role in the life of people living with dementia and of their family caregivers by providing a community of understanding, inclusion, solidarity and mutual support. They can promote policy-, professional- and social discourses, the recognition of dementia as a social reality, and overall awareness of this complex challenge. They can also foster transdisciplinary collaboration among professionals as well as between professionals and lay people affected by dementia based on mutual understanding, catalysing the formation and operation of acting communities and networks of interest.
The active and purposeful presence and activities of Alzheimer Cafés on Internet platforms, in the increasingly prominent channels and fields of social discourse and community life in the 21st century, can be an important tool in the realization of these benefits.
This two-part paper analyses the publicly accessible online footprint and behaviour of Alzheimer Cafés from this perspective as measured by a list of 10 possible functions. It scrutinizes the realisation of possible benefits and advantages offered by Internet platforms between September 2019 and August 2020, with a special focus on technology-based adaptive responses to the coronavirus-outbreak midway through that period.
The first part of the paper (Kucsera – Holpert 2021) briefly overviewed the Alzheimer Café concept and its history in Hungary, presented the methodology of the study and the first half of the research results. This second part of the paper presents the rest of the results, and makes recommendations for making more effective use of the potential of online platforms to realise the goals.
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Child protection in light of the Theory of Change
154-165Views:99It is essential that the child’s individual needs determine the required services and how these can give adequate responses to children’s problems. In Hungary, the child protection system is driven by less established professional principles, service planning and provision are of an ad hoc nature, child protection services lack any conscious design. The present study is based upon main qualitative results obtained from the research subject of “Is the State a Good Parent?”. Our goal is to reveal how the child’s needs are met in the system of the Hungarian child protection services (institutional and foster care), in what way the system can serve best the interests of the child, what systemic flaws can be identified according to child protection experts opinion.
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Equal opportunities at work? Equal opportunities and legal protection in the labour market
46-63Views:75The study examines the realization and the development of legal protection of equal opportunities
in the labour market. The purpose of the research is to identify the most common problems
related to the violation of equal opportunities during the period since the Equal Treatment
Authority began its work.
The study explores whether types of discrimination can be identified, which are the most
prominent and which are the most disadvantaged characteristics of the labour market in
Hungary today. The correlations discovered demonstrate that although regulation of the legal
background has greatly facilitated the awareness of individuals in this field, there is a need to
create further forums of discussion to achieve measurable results. -
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109-134Views:59In this second paper, we are attempting to demonstarte the changes in the political/citizenshiprelated and cultural-historical national identity of the Hungarian ethnic minority in Vojvodina.
With the end of Yugoslavia as a country this ethnic minority became Serbian citizens. The new
leaders of Serbia had an adverse view on this ethnic minority until 2014 when the Serbian
political leaderership changed their political identity and favoured the West instead of EasternEurope.The financial aid provided by the Hungarian Government to the Hungarians living in
Vojvodina, which targeted cultural and economic development in the area, aimed to better the
life and strenghten the national identity of this ethnic minority. Those who received financial
aid developed a better outlook on life. The possibility to acquire Hungarian citizenship easily strenghtened the Hungarian national identity of this minority and contributed to population
decline. While people migrating to Hungary are primarily motivated by access to better
education, others migrate to Western Europe for work. -
Online activities of Alzheimer Cafes in the 6 months preceding and following the coronavirus outbreak
19-41Views:73Alzheimer Cafés may play an important psychosocial supporting role in the life of people living with dementia and of their family caregivers by providing a community of understanding, inclusion, solidarity and mutual support. They can promote policy-, professional- and social discourses, the recognition of dementia as a social reality, and overall awareness of this complex challenge. They can also foster transdisciplinary collaboration among professionals as well as between professionals and lay people affected by dementia based on mutual understanding, catalysing the formation and operation of acting communities and networks of interest.
The active and purposeful presence and activities of Alzheimer Cafés on Internet platforms, in the increasingly prominent channels and fields of social discourse and community life in the 21st century, can be an important tool in the realization of these benefits.
This two-part paper analyses the publicly accessible online footprint and behaviour of Alzheimer Cafés from this perspective as measured by a list of 10 possible functions. It scrutinizes the realisation of possible benefits and advantages offered by Internet platforms between September 2019 and August 2020, with a special focus on technology-based adaptive responses to the coronavirus-outbreak midway through that period.
This first part of the paper, which briefly overviews the Alzheimer Café concept and its history in Hungary, and then presents the methodology of the study and the first half of the research results. The second part of the paper will continue to present the results, and will make recommendations for making more effective use of the potential of online platforms to realise the goals.
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The Tertiary education plans of disadvantaged secondary grammar school students in Hungary
42-64Views:46My study focuses on tertiary education chances and opportunities of disadvantaged and multiply disadvantaged children and youngsters. The target group of the research consisted of disadvantaged full-time secondary grammar school students who aim to get out of their position and status with the help of further education. Via the interviews I tried to examine the difficult topic of further education from the perspective of the disadvantaged and the multiply disadvantaged students, also aspiring to reveal their notions and fears about the topic. The main goal of my research was to get an insight into the perspective and mentality of disadvantaged and multiply disadvantaged students.
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„I have to be constantly disciplined” – a possible hypothetical model for pedagogical characters
160-172Views:50How discipline the teachers in the primary schools in Hungary? How should they discipline to
meet the expectations, values and norms of our society? According to my research, in today’s
primary schools there are significant differences between discipline and conflict management.
I analyse the differences and I set the behavior patterns of the teachers into three distinct types.
These three characters are controlled from traditions, outside and inside. These three types are
distinctly distinct in everyday life of schools, with different effects on students’ socialization. In
this paper, I present this hypothetical model, its operation in the dimension of discipline. The
interviews that underlie the analysis were prepared by village teachers teaching in the Vásárosnamény micro-region. -
„Beyond the school...”: The role of Study Halls in the social integration of disadvantaged children
3-27.Views:67Extracurricular activities have a significant role in increasing the disadvantaged Roma children’s school performance and compensate their socialization disadvantages. In the recent years, the study hall program becomes widely known in Hungary. Based on the literature and previous researches the study examines the needs, milestones, goals and target groups of the study hall program. This paper also demonstrates the economic and social conditions of the Integration Program, which has been in operation for 20 years, and supports effectively the development of social competences of disadvantaged social groups.
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How has university students’ drug use changed during Covid-19?
161-177Views:181The Covid-19 outbreak and the lockdown have had significant psychological and social impacts
on everyone’s life. Changing life circumstances and daily routines, job losses, uncertainty, have
put a psychological strain on us. As a consequence, we may experience risk behaviours more
often than before. The aim of the study is to analyse how risk behaviours have changed due to
Covid-19 among university students in Hungary, and to identify the psycho-social factors along which the shift can be explained. The analysis is based on the data of ‘Covid-19 International
Student Well-Being Study’ – a study initiated and coordinated by the University of Antwerpen
involving 75 universities from 26 countries. Four Hungarian universities – Corvinus University
of Budapest, the University of Debrecen, the University of Miskolc, and the University of Szeged
participated in the study. The survey was conducted among all university students who filled
in an online questtioannaire in Spring 2020. Our results show that all risk behavoiurs have
declined during the Covid-19 period. However, students who had had consumed drug before
Covid-19 have been using them more frequently during the pandemic. Our results suggest that
the recreational use have probably declined and the problematic use have probably increased
among university students during the pandemic. Our results highlight the fact that students for
whom the crisis situation imposed by the quarantine was hard to handle are more likely to use
substances more frequently, so offering them prevention and treatment options is crucial. -
How should we think about Europe? The model adaptation and model formation strategy of the Hungarian political elite
110-133Views:49In the past decades, researchers in Hungary have looked at almost all segments of the behavior and organization of elites, nevertheless they have dealt surprisingly little with how external actors (Europe, the West) affect the actions and way of thinking of the elites. The lack of approaches from this perspective is so apparent because the European orientation of the elites has changed twice in the past thirty years. (In the 1980s and starting from the second half of the 1990s.) The essay focuses on presenting two concepts of Europe, of which one is based on model adaptation (the opposition represents this approach) the other on model formation (which is characteristic of the governing parties). The essay shows the origins of both, as well as their connections to macro and micro political motifs. Within the frameworks of this, the study touches upon why the appearance of the model adaptation perspective was adequate in the 1980s as well as to why the model forming approach to Europe appeared on the right in the middle of the 1990s as its challenger. The analysis does more than just dynamically present the past thirty years, it also aims to show that we have to integrate Hungarian political history in a broader sense into our studies if we want to understand the changes that have occurred in the past decades concerning the relationship of the elites to the West. The stratum which Fidesz has brought to surface lays deep in Hungarian political history. We have to take this stratum into consideration even if we find this perhaps unattractive and we reject it.
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Contributions to the Regulation of the Referendum after 2013
5-25Views:38The purpose of this paper is to define and show the nature and functions of the referendum in
general, and to examine the legislative regulation of its institution in Hungary after 2013.
The brief introduction will be followed by an analysis of some of the institutional and
instrumental features of the referendum in the context of the constitutional law. Special attention
will be paid to the question raised by, and to the pros and cons of the referendum held in 2016.
The legal aspects and social consequences of this invalid referendum will be emphasized. -
Conflicts and democracy: Considerations on political conflicts and the need of their delimitation
8-24Views:51According to our common experience of political life, the relationship between politics and
conflicts seems to be obvious. However, it is also common to think about delimiting the intensity
of conflicts in a democratic context. This kind of complexity of the relation of democracy and
conflicts can be cexplained from two theoretical perspectives. First, in order to protect democratic
order, conflicts may lose their relevance in comparison to the value of consent or compromise. Second, even if we accept the importance of conflicts, we also should take into account the limits
of their intensity. These theoretical problems arise in the context of contemporary politics which
nature is eminently public and in which every announcement is open to discussion. This is what
discourse as a theoretical horizon means. The core concept for theorizing the conflictual character
of politics in a discursive manner is political debate. The article explores three kinds of debate
and communicative conflicts: John Stuart Mill, as a classical nineteenth century liberal, sheds
light on the importance of debate in issues of collective truth-seeking and emotional devotion
to our personal values. Márton Szabó, a leading theorist of political discourse in Hungary, also
treats debate as a core concept of political discourse studies, and theorizes debate not only as
a series of singular acts in the realm of politics, but as a mode of existence of politics itself.
Contrary to other contemporary ideas of communication and politics, discourse is therefore
inherently conflictual in its character. Similarly, but more embedded in contemporary debates
over democracy, Chantal Mouffe, one of the eminent theorists of agonism, interprets conflicts
in the context of democratic order, and emphasises the democratic conditions for constructing
democratic identities. Her ideas on agonistic democracy can fathom the relation of valuable
conflicts and their limits in a democratic regime. -
Investigation of working conditions and risk factors for burnout of social and pedagogical professionals
3-29Views:70The study scrutinizes the relationship between professional working conditions and burnout among Hungarian social and pedagogical professionals. Despite the fact that burnout and occupational well-being have been extensively researched abroad among professional helpers – primarily health care workers –, no quantitative survey has been conducted in Hungary so far in the target group we examined. Another added value of our study is that, besides work and organizational factors revealed by previous burnout studies, it points to the role of client- and fieldwork-related difficulties in the prevalence of burnout symptoms. In our exploratory, crosssectional survey, 261 social and pedagogical specialists participated from Baranya County. Our results suggest that job and task matching problems, and difficulties related to the fieldwork and clients lead to emotional exhaustion of professionals and decreased work efficiency. Deficiencies related to work motivation cause loss of efficiency as well. The results also indicate that out of the three occupational groups involved in the research, professionals working in the field of child protection are most at risk for emotional exhaustion, and the symptom of depersonalization is most relevant to child protection and family and child welfare workers. In addition, we have shown that longer professional experience can be considered a protective factor in burnout symptoms. Our results can make an important contribution to the establishment of individual and organizational level training, support, development, monitoring and evaluation programs and/or policy-level guidelines and interventions that can improve the working conditions of professionals and reduce their risk of emotional, mental and physical strain.
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Politics and media - Structure of the Hungarian media network in autumn 2018
107-129Views:65This article focusing on the changes within the Hungarian media sphere after the Orban–
Simicska conflict. After the conflict the Hungarian media sphere has changed radically. Those of
the media outlets which belonged to Lajos Simicska had cease their operation. Business persons
who have close ties to Fidesz has founded new media outlets. In my article I analyzed three
political case which happened during the Fall 2018. I assumed that the media sphere in Hungary
had become more polarized than before. In order to prove it, I created two groups of the media
outlets. The first one, which have close ties to the governing party, and the second one which has
not got ties to Fidesz. During my research I used three different methods. First, I
recorded astatistics about the articles. According to this, the media agenda shows large difference between
the groups. I did content analysis on the articles, which shows us a huge polarization between
the groups. The third one, was network analysis. The network analysis did not confirmed the
polarization hypothesis. -
Experiencing religiosity in prison: First results of qualitative research among long-term prisoners
1-23Views:41Religion has several positive effects on the life of the prisoner, helping him to cope with prison conditions and can significantly reduce the problems associated with imprisonment. In our qualitative research, we asked long-term prisoners in 3 prisons in Hungary, using a semi-structured interview method, about their perceptions of religiosity, the impact of religion on their life management, and the role they predict religion to play after the end of their sentence. Following a review of the literature, three hypotheses were put forward. We hypothesized that imprisonment is a crisis in the individual’s life that makes him or her open to religious values; religiosity influences the individual’s values and, through them, his or her attitude towards world phenomena; religious prisoners are a lower security risk. The hypotheses are confirmed. Beyond the reintegration of prisoners into society, the analysis of the interviews reveals that some of the narratives not only reflect a desire for reintegration but also a desire to serve as a goal.
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The concept and measurement of health literacy and its effect on breast screening participation
167-185Views:132This study analyses the relationship of low health literacy and non-participation in breast screening. It defines health literacy, discusses its measurement tools, reports on health literacy studies in various populations, describes participation rates in the Hungarian breast screening program, reviews studies dealing with the effect of health literacy on breast screening participation
and makes recommendations for the improvement of health literacy. Health literacy is the ability to gain, understand, and appraise health related information as well as using said information in decision making. There are validated tools for measuring
it. Like in other countries, surveys in Hungary found that the health literacy of the population is rather low. About half of the population has poor or problematic health literacy. -
The Career-building effect of volunteering in higher education
146-160Views:89Nowadays the motives for volunteering are changing among higher education students, and
besides traditional altruistic motives, career-building motives also appear (the acquisition
of work experience and professional knowledge, professional development, networking,
the presentation of voluntary work in the resume). In this paper, we use data from a survey
conducted in five Central and Eastern European countries (N=2,199) to examine through linear
regression analysis the factors affecting the strength of career-building motives and to analyse
through a logistic regression model the determinants of whether or not volunteering is related to the field of study. Our hypotheses are formulated based on the literature. Our results show
that career-building motives are more pronounced among women and students who have a
close relationship with external friends outside the university, study outside Hungary, and study
something other than engineering, computer science or science. Voluntary work is more likely to
be related to the field of study among teacher education students, students with an unfavourable
financial situation, those who study in Romania, and those who have a close relationship with
faculty.
