Ethnic categorization practices and boundary (re)making in a multiethnic borderland of Ukraine

Ágnes Erőss



Katalin Kovály

Geographical Institute RCAES, ELKH
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8554-6816

Patrik Tátrai

Geographical Institute RCAES, ELKH
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7365-1993

Abstract

Multiethnic borderlands, like Transcarpathia in Western Ukraine, are characterized by ethnic-linguistic-confessional complexity where ethnic boundary-making and ethnic categorization are constructed and rooted in politics. The present study aims to analyze how the mechanisms of ethnic categorization and boundary-making play out on a local level. Based on data analysis and fieldwork conducted in Hudya/Gődényháza in Transcarpathia, a village with ethnically, linguistically, and denominationally diverse population, we describe how “ethnicity” is getting blurred and reconstructed in the narrative strategies of residents. We examine the characteristics of the various classification systems (external classification, self-reporting) and their relation to each other. It is found that the ethnic, linguistic, and denominational affiliations in the village (and its wider region) are often divergent, which is reflected in the significant discrepancy between the data gathered in various ethnic classification systems. We argue that denomination is the prime factor of both self-identification and external classification, obscuring the boundaries between religious and standard ethnic terms. We further point to the formation of new boundaries between autochthonous and allochthonous populations. Although this cleavage emerged a few decades ago and has been transgressed by dozens of marriages among autochthonous and newcomers, it can easily get ethnicized, thus it adds an extra layer to the existing distinctions.

Keywords:

ethnic classification, ethnic identification, census, Greek Catholics, ethnic-religious contact zone, Transcarpathia, Ukraine

Ahmed, P., Feliciano, C., and Emigh, R.J. (2007). Internal and External Ethnic Assessments in Eastern Europe. Social Forces, 86(1), 231–255.
  Google Scholar

Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined Communities. Reflection on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
  Google Scholar

Appiah, A. (2005). The Ethics of Identity. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
  Google Scholar

Arel, D. (2002). Interpreting “Nationality” and “Language” in the 2001 Ukrainian Census. Post-Soviet Affairs, 18(3), 213–249.
  Google Scholar

Aspinall, P.J. (2003). The conceptualisation and categorisation of mixed race/ethnicity in Britain and North America: Identity options and the role of the state. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 27(3), 269–296.
  Google Scholar

Batt, J. (2002). Transcarpathia: Peripheral Region at the “Centre of Europe”. In: Batt, J. and Wolczuk, K. (eds.): Region, State, and Identity in Central and Eastern Europe (pp. 155–177). London: Frank Cass.
  Google Scholar

Boda, Z. (2019). Friendship Bias in Ethnic Categorization. European Sociological Review, 35(4), 567–581.
  Google Scholar

Botlik J., and Dupka G. (1993). Magyarlakta települések ezredéve Kárpátalján. Ungvár–Budapest: Intermix Kiadó.
  Google Scholar

Brubaker, R. (1996). Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and tbe National Question in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  Google Scholar

Brubaker, R. (2004). Ethnicity without groups. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  Google Scholar

Brubaker, R., Feischmidt, M., Fox, J., and Grancea, L. (2006). Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  Google Scholar

Brunsma, D. (2005). Interracial Families and the Racial Identification of Mixed-Race Children: Evidence from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. Social Forces, 84(2), 1131-1157.
  Google Scholar

Bura, L. (2001). A keleti szertartású kereszténység múltja és jelene Szatmárban. Magyar görög katolikusok a Szamosháton (Szatmár megyében). Magyar Egyháztörténeti Vázlatok, 13(3-4), 103–120.
  Google Scholar

Campbell, M., and Troyer, L. (2007). The implications of racial misclassification by observers. American Sociological Review, 72(5), 750–765.
  Google Scholar

Cantin, K.M. (2014). Process and practice: groupness, ethnicity, and habitus in Carpathian Rus’. Nationalities Papers, 42(5), 848–866.
  Google Scholar

Csata, Z., Hlatky, R., and Liu, A.H. (2020). How to head count ethnic minorities: validity of census surveys versus other identification strategies. East European Politics, 37(3), 572–592.
  Google Scholar

Csepeli, G., and Simon, D. (2004). Construction of Roma Identity in Eastern and Central Europe: Perception and Self-identification. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 30(1), 129–150.
  Google Scholar

Czepil, B. and Opioła, W. (2020). Ethnic diversity and local governance. The case of Opole province in Poland. Berlin: Peter Lang.
  Google Scholar

Dave, B. (2004). Entitlement through numbers: nationality and language categories in the first post-Soviet census of Kazakhstan. Nations and Nationalism, 10(4), 439–459.
  Google Scholar

Dickinson, J. (2010). Languages for the market, the nation, or the margins: overlapping ideologies of language and identity in Zakarpattia. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 201, 53–78.
  Google Scholar

Domokos, V. (2005). Etnikai és felekezeti elhatárolódás a naptárváltás tükrében. In: Beregszászi, A., and Papp, R. (eds.): Kárpátalja. Társadalomtudományi tanulmányok (pp. 30–55). Budapest and Beregszász: MTA EnKI & II. Rákóczi Ferenc Kárpátaljai Magyar Főiskola.
  Google Scholar

Egry, G. (2014). Phantom Menaces?: Ethnic Categorization, Loyalty and State Security in Interwar Romania. Hungarian Historical Review, 3(3), 650–682.
  Google Scholar

Elrick, J., and Schwartzman, L.F. (2015). From statistical category to social category: organized politics and official categorizations of ‘persons with a migration background’ in Germany. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38(9), 1539–1556.
  Google Scholar

Eriksen, T.H. (1993). Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto Press.
  Google Scholar

Erőss, Á. (2020). Akik maradtak: pillanatfelvétel az otthon maradt közösségekről a kárpátaljai magyar szórványban. REGIO: kisebbség,kultúra, politika, társadalom, 28(1), 138-170.
  Google Scholar

Erőss, Á., Váradi M.M., and Wastl-Walter, D. (2020). Cross-border migration and gender boundaries in Central Eastern Europe – female perspectives. Migration Letters, 17(4), 499-509.
  Google Scholar

Fényes, E. (1839). Magyar országnak, s a hozzá kapcsolt tartományoknak mostani állapotja statistikai és geographiai tekintetben IV. Pest: Trattner.
  Google Scholar

Geszti Z. (2001). Mi és a másikok. Felekezetek közötti konfliktus és vallási identitás Tiszabökényben. Tabula, 4(1), 34–59.
  Google Scholar

Glick-Schiller, N., Çağlar, A., and Guldbrandsen, T.C. (2006). Beyond the ethnic lens: Locality, globality, and born-again incorporation. American Ethnologist, 33(4), 612–633.
  Google Scholar

Halemba, A. (2015). Not Looking through a National Lens? Rusyn-Transcarpathian as an Anational Self-Identification in Contemporary Ukraine. In: Kleinmann, Y., and Rabus, A. (eds.): Aleksander Brückner Revisited: Debatten um Polen und Polentum in Geschichte und Gegenwart (pp. 123–146). Göttingen: Wallstein.
  Google Scholar

Harris, D., and Sim, J. (2002). ‘Who is multiracial?’: The fluidity of racial identity among US adolescents. American Sociological Review, 67(4), 614–627.
  Google Scholar

Hirsch, F. (1997). The Soviet Union as a work-in-progress: ethnographers and the category of nationality in the 1926, 1937, 1939 Censuses. Slavic Review, 56(2), 251–278.
  Google Scholar

Hobsbawm, E. (1990): Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  Google Scholar

Jenkins, R. (1996): Social Identity. London and New York: Routledge.
  Google Scholar

Jenkins, R. (2008). Rethinking ethnicity (2nd ed.). Tousand Oaks: Sage.
  Google Scholar

Jordan, P., and Klemenčić, M. (2003): Transcarpathia — Bridgehead or Periphery? Eurasian Geography and Economics, 46(7), 497–513.
  Google Scholar

Karácsonyi, D., Kocsis, K., Kovály, K., Molnár, J., and Póti, L. (2014). East-West dichotomy and political conflict in Ukraine – Was Huntington right? Hungarian Geographical Bulletin, 63(2), 99–134.
  Google Scholar

Keményfi R. (2004). Földrajzi szemlélet a néprajztudományban: etnikai és felekezeti terek, kontaktzónák elemzési lehetőségei. Debrecen: Kossuth Egyetemi Kiadó.
  Google Scholar

Kertzer, D.I., and Arel, D. (2002). Censuses, identity formation, and the struggle for political power. In: Kertzer, D.I., Arel, D. (eds.): Census and Identity. The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses (pp. 1–42). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  Google Scholar

Khanna, N. (2010). “If you’re half black, you’re just black”: reflected appraisals and the persistence of the one drop rule. Sociological Quarterly, 51(1), 96–121.
  Google Scholar

Kiss, T. (2018a). Demographic Dynamics and Ethnic Classifcation: An Introduction to Societal Macro-Processes. In: Kiss, T., Székely, I.G., Toró, T., Bárdi, N., and Horváth, I. (eds.): Unequal Accommodation of Minority Rights: Hungarians in Transylvania (pp. 383–417). Palgrave Macmillan.
  Google Scholar

Kiss, T. (2018b). Assimilation and Boundary Reinforcement: Ethnic Exogamy and Socialization in Ethnically Mixed Families. In: Kiss, T., Székely, I.G., Toró, T., Bárdi, N., and Horváth, I. (eds.): Unequal Accommodation of Minority Rights: Hungarians in Transylvania (pp. 459–500). Palgrave Macmillan.
  Google Scholar

Kocsis, K. (2001). Ethnic Map of the Present Territory of Transcarpathia (Subcarpathia) 1941, 1999. Budapest: MTA FKI and MTA KKI.
  Google Scholar

Kosiek, T. (2015). Ethnicity has many names: On the diverse acts of identification with the example of the Ukrainian minority in the Romanian Region of Maramureş. In: Kuligowski, W., and Papp, R. (eds.): Sterile and isolated? An anthropology today in Hungary and Poland (pp. 111–127). Poznań: TIPI.
  Google Scholar

Ladányi, J., and Szelényi, I. (2006). Patterns of exclusion: Constructing Gypsy ethnicity and the making of an underclass in transitional societies of Europe. New York: Columbia University Press.
  Google Scholar

Magocsi, P.R. (2015). With Their Back to the Mountains: A History of Carpathian Rus’ and Carpatho-Rusyns. Budapest and New York: Central European Press.
  Google Scholar

Marrow, H. (2003). To be or not to be (Hispanic or Latino): Brazilian Racial and Ethnic Identity in the United States. Ethnicities, 3(4), 427–464.
  Google Scholar

Nagel, J. (1994). Constructing Ethnicity: Creating and Recreating Ethnic Identity and Culture. Social Problems, 41(1), 152–176.
  Google Scholar

Pilipkó E. (2007). Ütköző identitások. Ungvár and Budapest: Intermix Kiadó.
  Google Scholar

Pusztai, B., and Pilipkó, E. (2008). ‘Religion in Motion’: Routes of Identification among Hungarian Greek Catholics in Subcarpathia. In: Mahieu, S., and Naumescu, V. (eds.): Churches in-between: Greek Catholic churches in postsocialist Europe (pp. 273–297). Berlin: LIT Verlag.
  Google Scholar

Rughiniş, C. (2011). Quantitative Tales of Ethnic Differentiation: Measuring and Using Roma/ Gypsy Ethnicity in Statistical Analyses. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 34(4), 594–619.
  Google Scholar

Siwek, T., and Kaňok, J. (2003). Silesian Identity outside of Poland. Economic and Environmental Studies. 5, 105–115.
  Google Scholar

Song, M., and Aspinall, P.J. (2012). Is racial mismatch a problem for young ‚mixed race’ people in Britain? The findings of qualitative research. Ethnicities, 12(6), 730–753.
  Google Scholar

Surdu, M., and Kovats, M. (2015). Roma Identity as an Expert-Political Construction. Social Inclusion, 3(5), 5–18.
  Google Scholar

Szilágyi, L. (2019). Magyar anyanyelvű románok identitása a romániai Szatmárban. Satu Mare Studii și Comunicări, 35(2), 307–314.
  Google Scholar

Tátrai, P. (2015). Transformations of the ethnic structure in Hungary after the turn of the millennium. Human Geographies, 9(1), 79–96.
  Google Scholar

Tátrai, P., Molnár, J., Kovály, K., and Erőss, Á. (2018). Changes in the Number of Hungarians in Transcarpathia Based on the Survey ‘SUMMA 2017’. Hungarian Journal of Minority Studies, 2, 103–135.
  Google Scholar

Telles, E., and Lim, N. (1998). Does it Matter Who Answers the Race Question? Racial Classification and Income Inequality in Brazil. Demography, 35(4), 465–474.
  Google Scholar

Urla, J. (1993). Cultural politics in an age of statistics: numbers, nations and the making of Basque identity. American Ethnologist, 20(4), 818–843.
  Google Scholar

Vaishar, A. and Zapletalová, J. (2016). Regional identities of Czech historical lands. Hungarian Geographical Bulletin, 65(1), 15–25.
  Google Scholar

Veres, V. (2015). The minority identity and the idea of the ‘unity’ of the nation: the case of Hungarian minorities from Romania, Slovakia, Serbia and Ukraine. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 22(1), 88–108.
  Google Scholar

Wimmer, A. (2013). Ethnic boundary making: Institutions, power, networks. New York: Oxford University Press.
  Google Scholar

Zahra, T. (2008). The ‘Minority Problem’ and National Classification in the French and Czechoslovak Borderlands. Contemporary European History, 17(2), 137–165.
  Google Scholar

Download


Published
2021-12-29

Cited by

Erőss, Ágnes, Kovály, K., & Tátrai, P. (2021). Ethnic categorization practices and boundary (re)making in a multiethnic borderland of Ukraine. Border and Regional Studies, 9(4), 173–198. https://doi.org/10.25167/brs4561

Authors

Ágnes Erőss 

Authors

Katalin Kovály 
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8554-6816

Authors

Patrik Tátrai 
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7365-1993

Statistics

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.


License

Copyright (c) 2021 Border and Regional Studies

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.