Nyitóoldal Migrations, Modernities, and Intercultural Mediation

Migrations, Modernities, and Intercultural Mediation

Bulgarian Immigrant Groups to Hungary in late 19th and early 20th c. and their Impact on the Social and Cultural Life of the Host Society

Term: 2022 – 2024

 

Bulgarian – Hungarian Bilateral Academy Program is supported by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Hungarian Academy of Sciences

 

 

Partner institutes:

Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IEFSEM–BAS)

Institute for Political Sciences, Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence

 

Involved institutes:

Interdisciplinary Doctoral School, University of Pécs,

Department of Ethnography and Cultural Anthropology, University of Szeged,

 

Events

11 December 2023: Mód László előadása: Szakmai tanulmányúton a ljaszkoveci Kertészeti Múzeumban (Bulgária)

  • Móra Ferenc Múzeum, Szeged
  • I. Bálint Alajos Nemzetközi Konferencia

30 November 2023: Bódi Ferenc előadása: A bolgárkertészek és magyar Nemzeti Parasztpárt (Българските градинари и унгарската Национална земеделска партия)

  • Bolgár Kutatóintézet, Budapest
  • „A Bolgár kertészek útja” Konferencia

8 November 2023: Workshop at Museum of Bulgarian market-gardening in Lyaskovets, Bulgaria

  • Link: https://bulgariatravel.org/the-lyaskovets-museum-of-gardening/
  • In the frame of the project the Hungarian participants visited on the 8th of November the Museum of Gardening in Lyaskovets where they had a possibility to get an insight view to the special material culture of the gardeners. They had discussion with the staff members of the museum about future cooperation especially doing a temporary exhibition which will introduce the stories of gardeners in Szentes region.

7 November 2023: Roundtable at Liszt Institute (Hungarian Cultural Institute) in Sofia, Bulgaria

6 November 2023:  Lecture and workshop at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies, with Ethnographic Museum, Sofia, Bulgaria (https://iefem.bas.bg/public-lecture-lm.html)

  • Moderator: Ferenc Bódi (HUN-REN CSS Institute for Political Science)

  • Lecturer: László Mód (PhD), assistant professor (University of Szeged, Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology); curator (Museum of Szentes)

  • Integration of Bulgarian Market-Gardeners into the Local Society. Examples from South-Eastern Hungary

  • Abstract: The immigration of the Bulgarian market-gardeners to Hungary was one of the most important international economic migrations for Bulgaria in the 20th century. The paper does not intend to deal with a contemporary migration phenomenon. It tries to interpret the integration of the members of a special social group in the host communities in a historical context. It was not by chance that the author chose Szentes and the surrounding villages as the site of the research. This area is one of Hungary's most important vegetable-growing regions thanks to the activities and influence of the Bulgarian gardeners. The steps of the integration process can be outlined with the help of different types of sources. Its final result was that in the host communities the Bulgarians became land and real estate owners, who, after a while, sought to obtain Hungarian citizenship as well.

30 May – 4 June 2023: Programme of the Bulgarian Team's Visit to Hungary

  • May 31st, Wednesday
    • Meetings with representatives of the Bulgarian Self-Government in Szeged
    • Visit to the Museum of Bulgarian Market-Gardeners in Szentes and meetings with museum specialists there, conversations on the history of Bulgarian Market-Gardeners’ communities in Southern Hungary
  • June 1st, Thursday: Participation in the International Conference "Readings in Bulgarian Studies – Szeged 2023" (June 1-2, 2023). Papers on the topic of the project will be presented by each member of its Bulgarian team.
  • June 2nd, Friday: Meetings and conversations with descendents of the Bulgarian market-gardeners’ community in Szeged

15 – 16 May 2023: Lecture and workshop, at Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum (IEFSEM) Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia

  • 15 May 10:00 – Workshop; Migrations, Modernities, and Intercultural Mediation - Bulgarian Immigrant Groups to Hungary in late 19th and early 20th c. and their Impact on the Social and Cultural Life of the Host Society
  • 16 May 10:00 – Lecturer: Dr Ferenc Bódi, senior research fellow (Institute for Political Science, Centre for Social Sciences, excellence institute of Hungarian Academy of Sciences & Research Institute and Archives for the History of the Hungarian Regime Change, Budapest)
    • Third Way and Bulgarian Market- Gardeners

    • Abstract: The aim of this lecture is to show the rural political movements, especially the National Peasant Party (Hungary), during the interwar period, which wanted to achieve the ascension of the peasant society in the country. The other aim of the presentation is to show an existed sociopolitical alternative – the so-called “Third way”, which experimented to find out a solution for several social issues of the peasant society, for example, the social misery, poor health conditions, lack of education, social anomie, etc.. Last but not least, the presentation wants to show that there was a correlation between Bulgarian market-gardeners and the sociopolitical movement of the “Third way”. Imre Somogyi (politician, sculptor, writer) was inspired and influenced by the social ideas of Bulgarian market-gardening in Hungary, the title of his most famous work, and bestseller: "Towards Garden-Hungary" became a concept at the time.

19 – 26 October 2022: Programme of Bulgarian – Hungarian Bilateral Academy Program "Migrations, Modernities, and Intercultural Mediation - Bulgarian Immigrant Groups to Hungary in late 19th and early 20th c. and their Impact on the Social and Cultural Life of the Host Society"

  • October 19th, Wednesday – Arrival in Budapest

  • October 20th, Thursday

    • ​10:00 – 13:00: Visit to the Museum of Ethnography in Budapest and meetings with museum specialists there

    • 14:00 – 16:00: Workshop of the Bulgarian – Hungarian research teams, place: Institute for Political Science, Centre for Social Sciences, Tóth Kálmán str. 4. T building 2nd floor meeting room (work language is English)

    • 18:00 – 20:00: Visit of the Bulgarian folk dance group “Yantra” in Budapest and meetings with its representatives

  • 2022, October 25th, Tuesday – 11:00 – 13:00 Public Lecture at the CSS Institute for Poltical Science, Budapest by Dr Nikolai Vukov (Associate Professor at Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IEFSEM–BAS)
    • Immigration and the Garden as a Workshop: Resettling and Cultural Interaction of Bulgarian Immigrant Groups to Hungary (late 19th - early 20th c.)

    • Abstract: The lecture will highlight some of the aspects of Bulgarian immigration to Central Europe in the end of the 19th and early 20th century, paying particular attention to the intertwining between economic and social factors on population mobility, on the one side, and - on the other, on factors related to cultural integration and interaction
      with host society. The presentation will emphasize the specific meanings of gardening as based on the mechanisms of economic survival, production and reproduction, and on the transfer of cultural practices, knowledge and traditions, enabling the access and interaction with host society in the context of rising modernity patterns.

Previous research co-operation and relations

The members of the Hungarian team of this project had regular communication and partnership over the years with the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore with the Ethnographic Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IEFEM–BAS) – through participation in conferences, publications and working discussions. The partnership between the two institutions has the support of the Scientific Council of IEFEM–BAS and of its Director. In 2017, Ferenc Bódi and Ralitsa Savova participated as speakers in the international conference in Sofia (2017), organized by the Ethnographic Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and published two chapters in the volume of the conference: Vukov, N., Gergova, L., Matanova, T., & Gergova, Y. (eds) Cultural Heritage in Migration. Paradigma Publishing House, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies, with Ethnographic Museum. Sofia.

https://www.migrantheritage.com/international-conference-cultural-heritage-in-migration-programme/  

https://www.migrantheritage.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/sbornik-Cultural-Heritage-in-Migration-2017.pdf

In 2018, 2019 and 2021, Ferenc Bódi had several working trips to Bulgaria, coordinated with IEFEM-BAS - for field research, participation in workshops and preparation of joint activities (field research, conferences and upcoming publications) with colleagues from the Institute of Ethnography of BAS.

https://politikatudomany.tk.hu/en/migration-mobility-and-culture

Research plan (extract) – Description of the objectives and expected results:

The project will seek to expand the team's research on understudied aspects of migration, modernity and intercultural mediation between Hungary and Bulgaria - with an emphasis on both the impact that Bulgarian immigrant groups have on the social and cultural life of Hungary, and the impact that cultural practices mediated by Hungary on Bulgarian society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The following basic theoretical premises will be considered:

  1. There are different modernities. The historical period called modernity gave way to the process of total modernization of life - from institutions to that of individual life strategies. The transition from the pre-modern age to modernity took place in specific places and at specific times: there was a great deal of local variation. Novelty and tradition had to live with each other in an uneasy co-tenancy: the tensions generated by this situation were different from region to region, from country to country. but the process of modernization was nowhere completely smooth. Eastern European modernity emerged from local responses from outer challenges. In this region it was a dual process: nation-building and modernization, local and global aspects, went, as in other parts of the world, hand in hand, resulting in local variants of modernity. The modernization trajectories of Hungary and Bulgaria have common and different elements. The challenges of modernity were the same for both countries, and their responses to them followed a regional pattern with local nuances. Agrarian populism, however, is a typically Eastern European historical-political phenomenon in the interwar era.
  2. The Bulgarians contributed to the development of modern cities, as their rapidly growing demand for food was served by them in the vegetable markets; moreover, they enrich Hungarian agriculture and horticulture. The influence of market-gardeners on Hungarian horticulture and cuisine is well known, but their association with their community, its social life and mode of production is less studied. This community of market-gardeners certainly influenced the development of Hungarian agricultural producers' organizations. After its study from an economic-anthropological approach, it would be possible to collect the existing elements of the still fragmented knowledge. This study aims to raise interest in this subject as well as serve as an introduction to encourage further research and bolder comparison with earlier research in various disciplines such as agricultural history, ethnography, economic anthropology, sociology, social geography and economic history.
  3. After the Second World War, the aspect of social development was covered by the dictatorship because this path of modernization as an alternative movement did not correspond to the prevailing ideology. That is why, we try to reveal this forgotten network and knowledge. We use the rich ethnographic heritage – documents, archives, case studies and existing information from descendants of Bulgarian market-gardeners that can be found in Hungary. Our research team aims to uncover the knowledge and organizational basis of this network. Who were these people who led this modernization movement? What were their fates? Connected in a Bulgarian-Hungarian research team, we are trying to create an abstract model that helps to understand the nature of such migration movements in the present as well.
  4. The Bulgarian labour mobility process in Hungary began after 1867 and continued until the Second World War. This initially labor mobility, later transformed into migration, was a bourgeois path from feudalism to capitalism with an initial accumulation of capital and at the same time a special spontaneous cultural mediation between Bulgaria and Hungary that had an impact on both societies at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.

 

Project Research Questions:

  1. What was the driving force of this labour mobility and migration process?
  2. Did this migration function as a process of social mobility, and if so, what was the intellectual background that formed these associations of market-gardeners?
  3. Did this mode of production and form of association influence Hungarian popular movements such as "Quality Revolution - Garden Hungary" etc.?
  4. Can we create different categories among migrations in the past?

 

 

 

Participants of the Bilateral Academy Program

Bulgarian side

Bulgarian Project Leader: Nikolai Ivanov Vukov, Ph.D.

Other project participants invited by the Bulgarian party:

 

  

Nikolai Ivanov Vukov

Associate Professor, Ph.D.

Research institute

Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IEFSEM–BAS)

Web site

http://iefem.bas.bg/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/12/Nikolai.Vukov_.ENG1_.pdf
     

 

  

Mariyanka Zhekova Borisova

Assistant Professor, Ph.D.

Research institute

Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IEFSEM–BAS)

Web site

http://iefem.bas.bg/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/12/Mariyanka.Borisova.ENG1_.pdf
     

Valentin Krasimirov Voskresenski

Assistant Professor, Ph.D.

Research institute

Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IEFSEM–BAS)

Web site

http://iefem.bas.bg/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/12/Valentin.Voskresenski.ENG1_.pdf

 
     

Hungarian side

Hungarian Project Leader: Ferenc Bódi Ph.D.,

Other project participants invited by the Hungarian party

 

  

Ferenc Bódi

senior research fellow, Ph.D.

Research institute

Institute for Political Science, Centre for Social Sciences, Budapest

Web side

https://politikatudomany.tk.hu/en/researcher/bodi-ferenc
     

 

  

László Mód

Assistant professor, Ph.D.

Research institute

University of Szeged, Department of Ethnography and Cultural Anthropology, Szeged, Member of Board of Hungarian Ethnographic Society,

Web side

https://doktori.hu/index.php?menuid=192&lang=HU&sz_ID=13463
     

 

Ralitsa Savova

Ph.D. candidate

Research institute

Interdisciplinary Doctoral School, Political Science Program, University of Pécs

Web side

https://ecpr.eu/profile/RalitsaSavova