Maintaining Magyarság ‘from above and below’: the transnational reproduction of Hungarianness between Hungary’s Balassi Institute and the Hungarian community in Australia

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the cultural maintenance efforts between the Hungarian State, Hungarian community leaders in Australia and Hungarian-Australian post-migrant generations. Specifically, it draws from their mutual involvement with Hungary’s leading cultural diplomacy institution, the Balassi Institute. It explores the multiple motivations and interests of each actor and the benefits each receives from the Institute’s ten month Hungarian Language & Cultural Studies program. The program provides a State subsidised cultural and educational experience in Budapest, aimed at engaging post-migrant Hungarians from the diaspora. The thesis draws on semi-structured interviews with Hungarian-Australians who attended the program between 2001 and 2018, analysis of program related documents, including motivation and community reference letters, and, finally, two focus groups with community leaders. It argues that the Hungarian State and community leaders from Australia hold shared aims to construct Hungarian goodwill ambassadors from program participants and thus enhance their efforts towards cultural sustainability. Hungarian ethnocultural capital is examined as the conduit facilitating this aspiration, as well as those aspirations held by the Hungarian- Australian participants – to experience a year in Hungary. Drawing on Bourdieu’s Generative Structuralism as a theoretical framework, the thesis highlights that Hungarian cultural maintenance is reproduced by the dynamic interplay between structure and agency ‘from above’ and ‘from below’ amongst these three actors in the Hungarian Diasporic Field. The thesis therefore contributes to scholarly work on the impact of State-led diaspora tourism on diaspora community development and nation building and, specifically, on Hungarian cultural maintenance in Australia. Additionally, it provides insight into diaspora tourism structures, as well as a guide to how local ethnic community organisations can engage with State-led programs to assist them in navigating youth community engagement within a transnational context.

Date of Thesis submission	2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Western Sydney University