ABSTRACT
Hungary’s politics of borders are closely linked to an emphatic re-assertion of national identity and sovereignty as well as the imposition of a new political reality in which liberalism and its advocates are marginalized. This chapter argues that the instrumental use of physical borders and fences is part and parcel of a bordering regime that aims to make hegemonic specific national conservative ideologies and understandings of “Europe”. Since the nationalist-conservative coalition’s massive electoral win of 2010, this regime has operated on a number of principles. At one level, European policies of cross-border cooperation have been re-appropriated in the pursuit of ethnopolitical goals, strengthening the cohesion of Hungary as a nation outside its territorial borders. However, at another level we can identity a more domestically targeted principle that involves the securitization of asylum seekers and the social marginalization of institutions, groups, individuals and ideas that do not conform to the illiberal and nationalist vision championed by the government. The bordering regime thus transfers the logic of fences and walls to Hungarian society as well, purposely creating divisions within society in order to secure ideological hegemony. As such, the bordering regime also has certain biopolitical qualities to the extent that it attempts to control visibility in the public sphere and negate a sense of political life based on a plurality of ideas and needs.
