Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses local responses to forced migration in Hungary. Examining discourses and practices of the radial right, it argues that the ‘migration crisis’ led to a reconfiguration of old hatreds, adding an Islamophobic layer to antisemitic conspiratorial thinking.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses local responses to forced migration in Hungary. Based on multi-sided fieldwork in 2015, it explores how the boundaries of the nation were reinforced and reimagined in relation to migrants in transit on their way to other European destinations. Examining discourses and practices of the radial right, it shows how violent imaginaries of the alleged threats posed by migrants from Muslim majority lands to Christian civilization, national cohesion and culture were heating old and new hatreds. An Islamophobic layer emerged in the far right´s grammar of exclusion that traditionally has targeted the country´s Roma minority and Jews. At the same time, concerned Hungarians contested racialised securitization and suspicion, reinscribing bios to 'human waste' deemed disruptive by the nation-state. The contradictory interpretations of migrants as waste or value, burden or benefit, parallel struggles over statehood and identity in globalised Hungary- between a society open to diversification processes and one that closes its borders to difference, on a sliding path towards an illiberal state.