The field of solidarity in times of a pandemic

Despite its central importance, solidarity is seldom analysed in a comprehensive manner. The majority of related studies target only specific aspects of its complex mechanisms, such as the functioning of redistributive systems; the related values; the private networks of care; or the civil society. Our study aims at providing a comprehensive analysis by understanding solidarity as a field in Bourdieu’s sense: it involves supportive interactions; competition for the related symbolic capital; illusions providing legitimate frames of deservingness and respectability; and divergent habitus depending on the broader structural position. In order to understand the contemporary solidarity field of Hungary, these dimensions are mapped in parallel: types of problems and needs; sources of received support; the problematic aspects of support; types of support provided to family members and friends; types of support provided to generalised others constitute the dimensions of a cluster analysis describing the idealtypical positions. These positions are analysed from the perspective of their structural background and the solidarity related attitudes. From a sociological perspective, situations like the pandemic provide unique opportunity for analysing otherwise tacit patterns of solidarity. Beside this opportunity, the pandemic is also used as a comparative framework: in the final section, the changes occurring in the various positions are also overviewed in order to highlight the dynamics of the solidarity field.

Voices from the Lagers in Germany

This paper traces the everyday realities of refugees living in camps in certain federal states of Germany during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. It provides a systematic analysis of refugees’ testimonies and demonstrates that they have not received similar levels of care and protection as German citizens, and that their movement has become increasingly regulated. Drawing on Achille Mbembe’s notion of ‘necropolitics’, I argue that the German State has treated refugees’ lives as less liveable than those of their own citizens during the pandemic, as was the case before it broke out. Much scholarship has explained the notion of refugee camps in various ways, but there has been less discussion of Lagers (camps) as a site where colonial oppression persists outside the temporal and spatial contexts of former colonies. Data are drawn from archived data sets and testimonies that refugees uploaded to websites of various refugee activist groups.

Digital learning for disadvantaged students during COVID-19

The digital learning instituted in Hungary in the spring of 2020 to halt the spread of the coronavirus there arguably encountered stumbling blocks as regards disadvantaged students. However, we have no information about the details, and mitigating these disadvantages is therefore fraught. The aim of our research is to shed light on the experience of digital learning among disadvantaged students. We analysed responses to an online questionnaire completed by teachers at 48 of Hungary’s after-school programmes (ASPs) who were in contact with over 1000, mostly disadvantaged children. We discussed the questionnaire-based analysis with ten ASP representatives in online workshops. In addition to ICT devices and Internet access, the lack of a learning space is also worth considering in promoting the establishment of objective conditions. In maintaining contact with parents, it is recommended that communication habits that differ from those of the middle class should be taken into account. Developing time management and other skills necessary for independent learning (e.g. reading comprehension, digital literacy) as well as alleviating the psychological burden represent a central task in similar situations. Our recommendations may be of use in the event of future school closures and in terms of facilitating digital learning among disadvantaged students.

The grand return of the troops

The aim of this paper is to fill the geographical gap in the literature about the militarization of COVID-19 through a comparative exploration of how the pandemic was handled in militarized ways in Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Drawing from official government and military statements, media articles, and expert interviews with defense intellectuals, we examine two interconnected areas – that of discourse and that of military domestic assistance. By viewing the developments through the lens of militarization and military-society relations scholarship, we argue that rather than serving as a ‘portal’ for civilian resilience, the pandemic constituted an unprecedented ‘return of the troops’ to Visegrad states and societies in terms of its size, scope, and duration, thus strengthening the pressure for re-militarization in the region that has been recorded in the last decade. The paper presents a number of analytical findings: first, it identifies the emerging gap between right-wing populist rhetoric that relied on warspeak and the human-centered communication of the armed forces; second, it reveals that military domestic assistance functioned as a military ‘band aid’ on systemic vulnerabilities, as well as incidentally converged with illiberal patterns of governance; third, it shows how the pandemic aided re-militarizing pressures, resulting in a significant boost to the defense sector, a positive public opinion about the armed forces, and military-society relations.

Are anti-immigrant attitudes the Holy Grail of populists? : A comparative analysis of attitudes towards immigrants, values, and political populism in Europe

In this paper we aim to discuss attitudes towards immigrants in a European context and analyse drivers of anti-immigrant attitudes such as the feeling of control, basic human values, political orientation and preferences related to right-wing populism. Based on data from the European Social Survey, we first describe how attitudes of people in Europe changed throughout a period of almost two decades (between 2002 and 2018). We will show that although attitudes are influenced by a number of demographic and subjective features of individuals, on the macro-level they seem to be surprisingly stable, yet hide significant cross-country differences. Then, we zoom in to the three most significant elements influencing attitudes towards immigrants: the feeling of control, basic human values, and political orientation. Applying a multi-level model we test the validity of three theories about factors informing attitudes towards immigrants—competition theory, locus of control, and the role of basic human values—and include time (pre- and post-2015 refugee-crisis periods) into the analysis. In the discussion we link ESS data to recent research on populism in Europe that categorizes populist parties across the continent, and establish that the degree to which anti-migrant feelings are linked to support for political populism varies significantly across European countries. We show that right-wing populist parties gather and feed that part of the population which is very negative towards migrants and migration in general, and this process is also driven by the significance awarded the value of security vis-à-vis humanitarianism.

Mapping the field of turbulent changes around the issue of migration in Poland

The issue of migration had become highly politicized in Poland already before the 2015 elections. The neoconservative Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) party made it one of the key topics in the electoral campaign both for the parliamentary and for the presidential elections, both of which the party won. Poland has switched from a country with the highest acceptance rate of refugees in the EU to the one with the lowest rate within about a year. The narrative about masses of refugees in Poland and at its borders threatening Polish culture, civilization and identity started to gather momentum and has provoked numerous intended and unintended consequences, political and social. On the one hand such statements and politics have sparked an increase in hate speech and incidents, and violent actions. On the other, as a reaction, there is an observable awakening of the civil society in Poland through more intensified actions of various groups and organizations. Both are outcomes of the situation in which the government and the ruling party take a strong and negative stance on the issue of migrants and refugees. At the same time, anti-racist activism has been instrumentalized as a tool for anti-government struggles, involving new actors into the struggle. The new alliances forged after 2015 are more than interesting and will be described below, based on the empirical research conducted for a comparative research project on anti-racist contention in the Baltic Sea region. I will show particularly the nature of cooperation between grassroots groups (often radical) and the more moderate NGOs, activists (of both stripes) and civil servants as well as politicians; and here point to the specific role of municipalities and the city-level.

A Sin or a Health Issue? : Morality Policy Framing and the State of Harm Reduction in East-Central Europe

Aims. There are significant differences in harm reduction services availability and performance in various countries. The paper examines the state of one of the harm reduction interventions – needle exchange services – through the lenses of morality policy, attempting to establish possible relationships between policy framing and policy outcomes. Method. The research uses an explorative design with cross-country comparison. The unit of analysis is drug policy in a country, and the geographical scope includes Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, following the maximum variation case selection procedure. Countries’ drug strategies are analysed to identify the policy frames and data on needle exchange programmes are used to assess the state of harm reduction. Results. The analysis identified health and social drug policy framing in Czechia and Slovakia, morality frame in Hungary and no frame in Poland. The availability of availability and coverage of needle exchange programmes is the highest in Czechia, followed by Slovakia, Hungary and Poland. Conclusions. The Hungarian case confirms the relationship between morality framing and poor policy outcomes, while the Czech case between health framing and effective policy. Further research is needed to establish the function of morality framing as necessary and/or sufficient condition for unsatisfactory policy outcomes.

Discovered and Undiscovered Fields of Digital Politics : Mapping Online Political Communication and Online News Media Literature in Hungary

The article reviews the main theoretical and empirical contributions about digitalnews media and online political communication in Hungary. Our knowledge synthesis focuses on three specific subfields: citizens, media platforms, and political actors. Representatives of sociology, political communication studies, psychology, and linguistics have responded to the challenges of the internet over the past two decades, which has resulted in truly interdisciplinary accounts of the different aspects of digitalization in Hungary. In terms of methodology, both normative and descriptive approaches have been applied, mostly with single case-study methods. Based on an extensive review of the literature, we assess that since the early 2000s the internet has become the key subject of political communication studies, and that it has erased the boundaries between online and offline spaces. We conclude, however, that despite the richness of the literature on the internet and politics, only a limited number of studies have researched citizens’ activity and provided longitudinal analyses.