ABSTRACT
Drawing on an examination of Hungarian encyclopedias, the chapter lays the groundwork for the conceptual historical investigation of Hungarian terms related to refugeedom. It traces the recent emergence of the neologism migráns (migrant) which carries negative connotations of asylum seekers, as opposed to the word menekült (refugee). The chapter makes the case for connecting refugee history as a topic and conceptual history as a method, an approach which will be particularly fruitful for historians of Hungary, since “refugee” is often thought of as the inverse of “citizen” in the Hungarian as well as international discourse of the 2020s, and the Hungarian tradition of conceptual history has been very much concerned with polgár (citoyen, bourgeois) and állampolgár (citizen).
