Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)
Interethnic spaces
142 László Szarka and which is often framed into a defined program. There are examples when movements of provincialism and regionalism sprout out from similar programs, based on condensed ideological images. The unaccountable other particulars observable on the field, the emotional attachment that the researcher experiences during interviews and techniques of symbolical and power definitions of space demonstrate that field and identity, space and community identity represent indissoluble unities. In the followings, with the help of some demographic data I would like to show the differences between the living spaces of the Hungarian minority in rural and urban environment. According to the 1991 census, of the overall 2.7 millions of the Hungarian ethnic minority living in countries neighbouring Hungary, almost sixty per cent lives in 1,410 communities with a majority of Hungarian speaking population. In Transylvania the number of urban centres where the majority of population is of Hungarian nationality, is eighteen; in Slovakia this number is thirteen, in Vojvodina (Serbia) nine and in Transcarpathian Ukraine it is only two. Thus, of the total number of 344 urban centres where ethnic Hungarian live, only 42 have a majority Hungarian population. Besides, at a closer look at these communities we find significant regional differences between the majority and minority settlement structures. The number of communities and persons living in nonmajority Hungarian communities is steadily increasing. On the one hand, this is related to the fact that in big and middlesized towns the ethnic and linguistic space loss is an irreversible process (with the only exception of small and middlesized towns in Székelyföld1 in Transylvania, Csallóköz2 in Slovakia and Bodrogköz). On the other hand, in the last decades, the Hungarian population rate of villages in ethnic contact zones and in always larger regions with scattered distribution of minority population has been also speedily dropping. Moreover, the intensive demographic growth of Romany communities in Central Eastern Europe and their segregation
