Hardi Tamás - Tóth Károly (szerk.): Határaink mentén. A szlovák-magyar határtérség társadalmi-gazdasági vizsgálata (2008) (Somorja, 2009)

Esettanulmányok

218

Summary

Table 1. The frequency and institutional background of official relationships (%)

Hungarian sample

Slovak sample

Had contact to any office or authority in the last five years

2.7

(N=27)

10.1

(N=99)

Frequency (first mention)- daily

3.7

2.1- several times a week

0.0

1.1- several times a month

3.7

13.8- less frequently

92.6

83.0

What sort of institution? Most frequent mentions of first institutions and the number of mentions)

1. Police (8)

2. Border Guard (6)

3. Municipal government (2)

4. Land Registry Office (2)

5. Labour Office (22)

6. Hungarian Tax Authority (19)

7. Police (14)

8. Municipal government (7)

9. Registry Office (5)

10. Border Guard (4)

Source: Questionnaire survey of inhabitants (2008).

much lower (48%), almost half of them (47%) have personal networks consisting of 2 or 3 sorts of relationships simultaneously (this proportion is only 28% on the Hungarian side).

According to our calculations, an average inhabitant in the south Slovak border zone has contacts to at least 10 persons in Hungary, if s/he is not isolated. This is true for the Hungarian side as well, but the average number of contacts in Slovakia is only 6. The maximum values highlight the background of the significant differences between the average and the mean values. The questionnaire survey involved persons who have a large number, maybe 200-300 contacts on the other side of the border.

Basic features of the cross-border institutionalised (official or administrative) interactions

Only a small proportion of the inhabitants had contact to the official authorities of the other country in the last five years (Table 1). In tire Hungarian sample there were only 27 such persons, somewhat more on the Slovak side, but their proportion remained below 10% even in Slovakia. In addition, such relationships were occasional; most respondents (83% and 93%, respectively) contacted some institutions a few

times, only. Continuous touch to the official organs is negligible: only 3-4% of the inhabitants had daily or weekly contacts to the offices and authorities in this period.

The organs most frequently mentioned by the Hungarian respondents were the police, border guard, municipal governments and land registry offices. The list of the Slovak respondents is more complex and mostly concerns labour and taxation issues. The most frequently mentioned organs were the police, border guard and some municipal government also in this case.

Possible explanations for the frequency of the cross-border relations

Summarising the most important features of the strong and weak interpersonal relations, and the contacts with the official organs it became clear that the interactions from Slovakia to Hungary are much more intensive (due to the Hungarian ethnic minority living in Slovakia) than the interactions from Hungary towards Slovakia.

The social interactions of this type of the people living in the eastern and western part of the border region have been built out on the other side of the border with by and large the same probability. The settlement size is a not differentiating factor either: the inhabitants of neither the rural areas nor the big cities have