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- Gagyi, Agnes, 1980
(författare)
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Anti-Migration as State Politics in the Lack of Immigration: How the International Political Economy of Hungary's Anti-Migration Stance Produces a Trap for Human Rights Arguments
- 2017
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Ingår i: 6th Bi-annual meeing, Peace and Conflict Studies in Anthropology (PACSA). Amsterdam:28-30 august.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Since 2010, Hungary's conservative government is building an authoritative-corporatist regime, where the interests of national capital, the interests of a 'national' industrial working class flexibilized to serve the needs of transnational industrial plants, and the interests of unemployed reserve labor, locked in rural pockets of poverty where it competes with Roma people in even more precarious positions for state aid, are bound together ideologically in the name of "national interest". As ongoing social polarization strains the political legitimacy of the regime, campaigns over security threats by migration are brought to the core of the regime's legitimation mechanism. Within that context, the paper focuses on a particular paradox of interventions challenging the anti-migration discourse: due to the particular junction between Hungary's subordinate position towards European capital, its extreme openness and neoliberalism after the regime change, and the consequent internal delegitimation of messages of Europeanization and “democratization", human rights messages came to work as political support for the right wing. Good-willing interventions by international and local actors only reinforce those effects, by activating the key triggers on which the government's right-wing rhetoric is built. Based on examples from various scales of social interactions in the '2015 summer of migration", and examples of experts’ interventions, the paper will explore that particular trap.
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| 2. |
- Gagyi, Agnes, 1980
(författare)
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Class and Intellectual Politics: Some Notes on the Contexts of a New Intellectual Left in Hungary and Romania
- 2017
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Ingår i: Spectrum of Communism - Symposium at Blinken OSA. Budapest: 16-17 november.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- I argue that the contemporary wave of left mobilization among intellectuals in Hungary and Romania integrates in a cyclical pattern of middle class politics in the region, where phases of revolt and phases of integration into state structures follow each other, mobilized by the pressure of limited and state-based middle class development. From that perspective, the new intellectual orientation towards the left appears less as a direct political awakening to structural positions, but rather as a further case of middle-class politicization, where universal frames of historical visions projected from intellectual positions work as an element of intellectuals’ own reorientation of symbolic and material strategies. Speaking from the position of left convictions born within the same conditions, I join a broader discussion on potential connections between intellectual left politics and broader social alliances, a debate my panel interlocutors have significantly contributed to. Contrasting the cases of Hungary and Romania, I point at several relations where the meaning of left positions is defined by meso-levels of local constellations of systemic integration. Drawing out common characteristics of new left fields, I point out specific features of field dynamics that are related to situations where left politics are limited to investments of intellectual capital.
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| 3. |
- Gagyi, Agnes, 1980, et al.
(författare)
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East-Central European feminist activism in the context of uneven development in the EU, and ways to move forward
- 2017
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Ingår i: The Future of the European Union - Feminist Perspectives from East-Central Europe. - : Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. - 9786158016155
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this paper, we analyse points of connection between the feminist movement, the European Union, and the gendered division of labour in East-Central Europe with the methodology of world-systems analysis. The method and theoretical framework of world-systems analysis enables us to understand, first, that the European Union is the product of a certain historical-world economic phase. Second, that the southern and eastern expansion of the EU is embedded into a different world economic phase. Third, that the history of (feminist) movements of given nation states or regions cannot be understood merely through the social history of those nation states; rather, it has to be considered that (feminist) movements are also embedded in economic macro-processes. Fourth, that relations of dependency arising from unequal development are expressed in them. And fifth, that the relationship between informal and formal work is a hierarchical one:through theircombination, informal work acts as a subsidy to the cost of formal labour, thus contributing to the accumulation of value on higher levels of the chain and within the household relation; female reproductive labour generally acts as a subordinated subsidy to male labour; and the contradicting logics of accumulation through unequal household relations, and love and care as part of reproductive relations, makes the household an intrinsic front of battles and compromises of human life within capitalism.
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| 4. |
- Gagyi, Agnes, 1980, et al.
(författare)
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Housing on the frontier of uneven development and social struggles on Europe's eastern periphery
- 2017
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Ingår i: 13th Conference of the European Sociological Association. Athens: 29 august - 01 september.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- One of the frontiers where reorganizations of accumulation meet social resistance in the present crisis of capitalism is that of housing. Financialized capital is (yet again) redirected towards investment in the built environment, and specifically housing; social struggles arise from the threats this poses to social reproduction. Cities have been pointed out as a prominent arena for the politicization of conflicts between accumulation and social reproduction for long. Although this process unfolds globally, it is concretely articulated in variegated ways on different points of the global economy. Our approach connects insights on the urban frontier to a long-term dynamic view on localized aspects of uneven development, and asks how present conflicts in the field of housing are situated within that context. We discuss the case of present dynamics of the Hungarian housing market and the structuring forces of public policies in this field. We argue that the housing market is an important driver of uneven development on various scales. One such aspect we identify in the dynamics of the urban-rural divide as a local polarization between metropolitan and satellite functions of world-economic integration. We analyze strategic problems of housing movements in Hungary today against the background of structural hierarchies produced through Hungary’s long-term integration into global accumulation processes. This approach complements our understanding of the complex field of social forces within which housing conflicts are set, and provides a specific angle on the strategic questions they face as they strive to give political articulation to systemic tensions.
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| 8. |
- Gagyi, Agnes, 1980, et al.
(författare)
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State, forex mortgages and real estate: some theoretical aspects of the Hungarian case
- 2017
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Ingår i: The Real Estate/Financial Complex International Conference. Leuven, Belgium : 13-15 january.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Globally accumulated surplus capital is channeled into real estate in ways regulated by state/ public institutions on various scales. The 2008 crisis hit strongly on the Hungarian housing market, and was met by a series of measures from the conservative government. These aimed to decrease foreign dependency of housing finance, and support the government’s class politics (both in corporate and household sectors). This state intervention is currently reconstructing the real estate – finance link in meaningful ways. Relying on traditions of research on uneven development and critical political economy, we reconstruct the context of this particular conjuncture, to draw some theoretical conclusions in contribution to the idea of the real estate/financial complex. We point out the dependence of local real estate markets from global financial cycles; the political motives of government response to the forex crisis; and the institutional hierarchies that determined the unequal distribution of risks and profits during the development of the crisis. Our conclusions conceptualize the state as a power connector between global financial flows, local social structures, and the role of the political geographies of real estate, in its capacity to redistribute and govern the polarization of wealth and misery.
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
- Gagyi, Agnes, 1980, et al.
(författare)
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The rise and fall of civil society in East-Central Europe
- 2017
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Ingår i: Moskalewicz M. & Przybylski W. (eds) Understanding Central Europe. - London : Routledge.
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Civil society was the slogan of the democratic transitions in East-Central Europe after 1989. After the euphoria of 1989 was over, the anticipated success of civil society collided with the facts. Drawing on literature and research on a number of waves of civil mobilisation and attempts of institutionalisation of civil society in East-Central Europe since the early 1980s, we reflect on the hierarchical developmental framework and the asymmetric epistemic and funding structure at the root of the concept of civil society used during the regime change and the post-socialist transitions. Addressing the structural and symbolic hierarchies in which Eastern European civic mobilizations have been entangled, we point at key ways and moments in which the interpretative and institutional framework of civil society failed to address burning questions of economic democracy and rather aided than soothed the tensions of post-socialist politics. We claim that in a global world where authoritarian nationalism is on the rise, a reconsideration of political participation outside the normative and hierarchical frameworks of civil society is needed in order to address the political and economic contradictions in the post-socialist world and beyond.
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