Beyond borders

Fears concerning migration and emigration in the city of Ózd

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to give a more systematic and empirical interpretation of the phenomenon of fear and to examine the impact of a politics of fear at the local level. The paper seeks to answer the questions: how do fears related to the migration crisis appear in the narratives of the unemployed in Ózd, and what other types of politically relevant fears are visible in the interviewees’ stories? The most important finding of the paper is that while fear of migration is part of informants’ narratives, ts role is only “secondary”. Migration related fears are essentially ‘on their own’, without any real narratives, as stories from the television cannot compensate for the lack of personal experience. The interviewees are bound by the problems of their everyday lives, and so in many cases the issue of emigration comes into view instead of immigration. Emigration is a kind of umbrella term, which includes the negative experiences of insecurity, unemployment and low life chances. In addition, a social crisis unfolds in the stories of informants. On the one hand this crisis is based on a general distrust of others and an extreme distrust in institutions, and on the other hand it refers to a dangerous, crime-ridden world. This can also be interpreted as part of the ‘crisis discourse’,
which relates to the factory closures back in the 1990s but is still present in the city today.