Voluntary or forced exit – life on the margins

Abstract

In our study we investigate the past and present, the meanings and the social practices related to the ‘puszta’ (hamlet), a special Hungarian type of social space that administratively belongs to a village but is located outside of it (sometimes at quite a distance) and is usually inhabited by a population that can range from some dozens of people to several hundreds. This special type of hamlet has a long social history as an administrative unit and as a habitation of agricultural workers who worked the land surrounding it. The land usually belonged to one of the churches or to some landlords or later to the socialist agricultural cooperatives.

In our study we attempt to answer the questions as to what social changes occurred in the hamlets after the political and economic transition in 1989–90, what kind of economic activities we can observe there, what caused the situation of the present-day hamlets and to find explanations for the variations found in terms of social relations, social situation and individual subsistence strategies. Applying methods of sociology, social geography, and sociography, we intended to reveal the historical roots of those variations as well.

Our article is the outcome of a three-year research project in which we carried out fieldwork in four villages located in different geographical regions next to four of Hungary’s borders. The research focused on various aspects of marginality both symbolic and real: social, ethnic, geographical and economic. During our fieldwork we were faced with a special form of marginality – a ‘marginality of marginality’ – that led us to pay more attention to it and draw close-ups of the hamlets we visited.

All four hamlets – Boldogasszonypuszta, Tömördpuszta, Tótokföldje, and Eperjespuszta – used to be part of the manorial system in feudal times, but their destinies began to diverge after the two World Wars when the hamlets had to play very different roles. These changes largely altered the modes of livelihood and the composition of the population of the previously more or less homogeneous hamlets. The change of the political system further influenced the fate of the hamlets, and they became even more diverse in character. Tótokföldje in Baranya county and Tömördpuszta in Komárom county became the home of outcasts and social dropouts, rootless people living just around the subsistence level. The other two hamlets, Boldogasszonypuszta and Eperjespuszta are socially more heterogeneous. We found inhabitants who do not live there by necessity but who chose to either go into hiding – because of some conflicts with the law – or seek some romantic or alternative lifestyle there. According to our observations, all hamlets are doomed to slowly becoming slums since it is not the job opportunities but the property status that determines their further existence. Those who settle there voluntarily are smaller or bigger capital owners who buy property in the hamlets. They, however, do not create any job opportunities that the other inhabitants could benefit from. Due to this process the hamlet is turning into a social space of ultimate exclusion.