The effect of borders on identity building in minority life

Abstract

In my research, I have used the postmodern concept of border to analyze the influence of borders on identity building of a national minority, namely that of the Hungarians in Transylvania in the interwar period. According to recent border studies, borders can be dealt with as zones and as cultural and mental landscapes, which serve to make contacts between different entities (in the case of this research between different linguistic and ethnic groups). The aim of this study is to seek possible answers to questions such as why and how people produce borders through symbols and narratives. How does the human perception of a landscape influence the shaping of a landscape and the way people treat that landscape? In a narrower sense, it analyzes topics like the interpretation of national minority existence, the bidirectional attempt to construct and deconstruct virtual borders and the symbolic value of the mother tongue for a minority. The basic materials of my present study are Transylvanian Hungarian literary texts. As far as the theoretical basis of the study is concerned, I analyze the topic from the perspective of border studies, cultural and mental landscape studies and identity studies.