LECTURE 11

Cultural, identity, regionalism and inter-cultural communication

Starting from the research data of a recent project dealing with the guest worker phenomenon in the Romania-Hungary border region, during the discussion following the lecture students formulated interesting observations and remarks concerning the effects on ethno-cultural identity of current cross-border economic, social and migratory trends. The discussion focused not just on the issue of cross border employment of Romanian citizens in Hungary, but also touched other relevant aspects of the problem, such as the cultural effects of expanding Hungarian private entrepreneurship investing in Romania. In presenting their views, students also often referred to the ethno-cultural significances of current political developments, such as the recently much debated issue of granting or not granting preferentially Hungarian citizenship to the ethnic Hungarians living in the neighbour countries.

Similarly to previous occasions, the differentiation between the outlook of students from Romania and Hungary became apparent here as well. To a much larger extent than in the case of their colleagues from Romania, students from Hungary, are "looking westward", not just in terms of perceiving current political developments, but also in terms of choosing the preferences and models of inter-cultural communication.

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