Transnationalizing ethno-linguistic Hungarian minorities in the Carpathian Region: going beyond Brubaker et al. (2006)

With the rise of globalization and Europeanization Hungarian ethno-linguistic minorities in the Carpathian Region have become ‘mobile’ in the broadest sense of the concept. Th is has allowed them to become independent actors in all sorts of transnational confi gurations. In Marácz (2014a), one of these transnational confi gurations has been characterized as a ‘quadratic nexus’ with at least four diff erent actors, one of them being the ethno-linguistic minority. In this paper, I will argue that an analysis of inter-ethnic relations in terms of local dynamics, like the one elaborated in Brubaker et al. (2006) for the Romanian-Hungarian relations in the multi-ethnic, multilingual region of Romania’s Transylvania is no longer adequate against the backdrop of globalization and Europeanization. Instead ethno-linguistic minorities interact with all sorts of political, cultural, communicative, and socio-economic global and transnational networks that aff ect the local relations, i.e., both everyday ethnicity and the power relations