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

124 Károly Tóth

The ethnic structure of the village became stabilised in the 1980s and 1990s, and up to the present days it shows the same picture with small divergences.

The proportion of other nationalities in the village is very small. In the period before the Second World War, 16 persons of other nationalities lived in the village; these were mainly families of Jewish nationality. Only one Jewish family (2 persons) returned to the village from the war. Presently, persons of other nationalities (German, Czech, Ukrainian, etc.) come to the village only through marriages.

It is peculiar that the village has no residents of Roma nationality. They did not live here either in the past. It is even more interesting if we consider that in nearby Veča (only 2 km distant from the village) Roma lived in a separate quarter and their settlement actively continued during the 1980s. They occasionally came to Dlhá nad Váhom to beg or to play music, but they never settled there. This can explain why today the mass migration of the Roma population is avoiding the village, as they normally prefer to settle down in places where a Roma community already exists or where Roma families live. The only memory of Roma living in the village refers to a family in the beginning of the 1940s, but as the villagers say, they too “were wandering Roma” and they “soon left”.

Regarding the denominational composition, the village’s population is predominantly Roman Catholic. In 1991, 743 persons declared themselves Roman Catholic; the number of persons with no faith exceeded the number of Protestants (25 being the former, 12 the latter) and 62 persons were of unknown denomination. The only church in the village is Catholic, built in the 19m century. It has always had a priest, living in the vicarage near the village’s school. The mass is conducted in Hungarian.

The village has a Hungarian and a Slovak elementary school with classes from the first to the fourth grade, in 2000 the Hungarian school had 20 pupils; the Slovak school had 10 pupils. There is a kindergarten as well.

In the past, the majority of the population worked in the local agricultural cooperative. The cooperative still exists;