Identity and social determinants of perceiving ethnic discrimination of Hungarians from Romania

This paper analyses the subjective ethnic discrimination in case of Transylvanian Hungarians from Romania. We would like to know to what extent the subjective perception about discrimination is determined from a social, national identity and ethnopolitical point of view, based on a representative survey data from 2007 and 2010. During our research, we have pointed out what are the social factors that determine the perception of subjective discrimination. We analyzed the extent to which social and demographic factors, as well as the character of the ethno-national identity and the character of the regional ethnocultural environment probable alter the perception of subjective ethnic discrimination among the members of an ethnonational minority, such as Hungarians from Romania. According to our hypothesis, the perception of ethnic discrimination is primarily determined by the ethno-national minority identity loaded with nationalistic or ethnocentric elements and by the character of relationship between majority and minority, while social-demographic determination or even educational level or knowledge of other languages are less important. Alogistic regression model was involved in the analysis in order to explain the social determinants of perceiving ethnic discrimination, in three steps, including independent variables the socialdemographic ones, as well as the variables about education, school socialization and ethnolinguistic environment (variables of regional belonging). Thirdly, the model incorporates elements of national identity variables and the attitudes towards Romanians