ABSTRACT
Introduction This chapter outlines how three different groups of people – young men, gypsy workers, and small-holder farmers – try to ‘make ends meet’ in the rural Hungarian countryside. Rurality connotes a seemingly self-evident physical or isolated removal from the hustle and bustle of opportunity possible in better-networked towns and cities. Despite strong rural-to-urban migration and high outright emigration rates in Hungary today, more than half the population continues to live – many choose to live – in ‘rural’ areas. Herein I recount the labour and economic decision-making of such men and families from the Northern Cserehát, which along statistical measures is considered marginal and depressed: the SlovakHungarian border region is the economically poorest of Hungary, far from urban amenities and reliable transport networks and markets. These men attempt to take advantage of the relative neglect of the state to try to get by and more – to get ahead, to be comfortable, to claim and continue to make the ‘rural’ a viable livelihood option (Figure 11.1).
