The East-South Axis: Legitimizing the “Hungarian Solution to Migration”

The Hungarian solution to migration is a policy package consisting of three elements: selective closure of borders, series of deterrents, and governmental xenophobic discourse and propaganda campaigns. This policy package is legitimized by the Hungarian government’s strategic self-positioning as the “frontier of Europe.” This position is enabled by interwoven moral divides of the European space: the east/west and the Europe/Balkans. At the same time, the Hungarian solution is anchored to a series of domestic political manoeuvres that advance a hegemonic discourse of citizenship and attempt to exclude domestic, marginalized populations from the public sphere. In order to understand the Hungarian government’s punitive approach to migration, its policy needs to be examined in the domestic context, on the one hand, and in relation to those European moral hierarchies that are used to legitimize these policies, on the other. This article is a contribution to discussion on the dynamics of European peripheries in relation to migration and location.