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

A village on the ethnic periphery 139

decrease of all districts as 100% (this means around 44,000 persons in the South Slovakian districts), then the districts which demonstrate a decrease of over 10% of the population are the following: Nové Zámky (14,6%), Galanta (Šaľa) (around 11%) and Levice (10,5%). In the second category are the districts with a 5-10% decrease (Bratislava city (8,7%), Komárno (8.7), Rožňava (8%), Trebišov (6,9%), Nitra (6.2%) and Lučenec (6.2%), while all the other districts show a population decrease below 5% with an average of 4%.

According to some, the rapid decrease of Hungarian population can be partly explained by the presumption that a numerous part of the large Roma population in Central and eastern Slovakia declared Roma nationality in the recent census while in the past censuses they allegedly declared Hungarian nationality. In this context it is noteworthy that the Central Slovakian districts’ population decrease remains below the average. Thus, the data from the 2001 census prove that the reason for the drastic decrease of the proportion of the Hungarian population is not the fact that a big part of the population declared Roma nationality. Moreover, I venture to say that also the grave decrease in the Hungarian population in West Slovakia has little to do with the moderate growth of the Roma population.

5 The project was lead by László Szarka and Róbert Keményfi.

6 Hungarian equivalents: Veľká Mača Nagymácséd, Kráľová nad Váhom Vágkirályfa.

7 The families can choose between the Slovak or the Hungarian language for their children's school education.

8 The interviews were conducted by Zsuzsanna Árendás.

9 From a methodological point of view our approach - we did not ask the persons directly, instead we addressed our questions to a committee- might be objectionable. However, our aim was to obtain information on the community that could not be gained in any other way. The objectivity was to be secured by the common consent of the committee.

10 In reality the number of building sites is slightly lower, since some of the sites possess more house numbers, depending on whether in the future a house (or more houses) can be built on the site.

11 Here I would like to express my compliments to each member of the committee, in particular to the mayor, Róbert Izsóf, who was of great help to me during the whole process of field data collecting.