Workers and Neo-nationalism

Abstract

This chapter explores the lived experience of workers with the transition from socialism to capitalism. Drawing on the thematic analysis of 82 interviews conducted with workers in four towns in Hungary’s rust belt hit by deindustrialisation (Ajka, Dunaujvaros, Salgotarjan, Szerencs), the chapter highlights how the multiscalar lived experience of market-centric commodifying reforms violated an implicit social contract and changed workers’ narrative identities. However, this shared experience of class dislocation did not translate into a working-class identity. In the absence of a class-based, shared narrative and lacking a viable political tool to control their fate, working-class neo-nationalism emerged as a new narrative identity to express workers’ anger and outrage.