Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)
Time and social networks
Identities in change 45 ily relations, festivities, etc. About these interviews it can be stated that individuals who stayed in the native village (in this case Matúškovo) emotionally were not so deeply involved as those who had to leave. It is quite simple and understandable: resettled persons lost not only relatives, but also the familiar social and economic environment, the native village, their way of life, everyday practices, and so on. In the case of inhabitants of Matúškovo, these experiences are much "lighter” (though I would not dare to deny their long-lasting importance), characteristically they are more episodic, usually organized around the very act of the resettlement, then a long time-gap and memories from much later times followed, connected to the home-visits of the meanwhile re-categorized “Hungarian relatives”. What is not in this study... My research was focused on the integration of displaced people from former Czechoslovakia in their new environment and their maintenance of relationships with their "homeland” (both the place and people living there), however, the full interethnic situation would require further detailed research. Further work would be useful in the other two “native villages” (Mostová and Horné Saliby5) from where some inhabitants of present Hird also came. A description of the interethnic relations within Hird would be more precise in presenting the interpretations of the “aboriginal Hungarians" (as they are called in the village) and the Germans, thus investigating the ethnic borders from “the other side” as well. It would be also useful to compare the situation in Hird with some other ethnically similar villages in Hungary (e.g. on Alföld), or with ethnically more “homogeneous" villages (e.g. Bikái in Baranya county), in the sense that their resettled inhabitants came from only one village. In this way several other questions could be raised, such as: how the economic and environmental factors influence the social and ethnic integration; whether a compact, resettled community set in a new environment stays homogeneous or chooses a way of
