Paper long abstract:

Recent homophobic attacks by far-right nationalist groups on the Budapest Pride March have located the March at the heart of current struggles over the meaning of public space in postsocialist Hungary, and thus over the nature of postsocialist belonging as well. In this ethnographically-grounded paper I examine the changing use of Budapest's space by the Pride March. Mapping its emergence from marginal to central and national spaces and sites, I argue that the March has simultaneously appealed to and challenged the hegemonic meanings of such spaces, thus producing alternative imaginings of the relationship between national and transnational identities and communities. Spatial restrictions imposed in response to the attacks in the name of security, however, have dramatically reshaped the March's relationship to public space, threatening to transform its key role in ongoing debates about the boundaries of postsocialist citizenship.