engleski

Hungarians in Pula: Case Study of Minority in Istria

The city of Pula is the urban center of the Istrian peninsula and its population has been multicultural and multiethnic for centuries. Nowadays, nine minority communities contribute to this multi-ethnic and multi-cultural identity of the city. One of the oldest communities is the Hungarian. The last wave of settlement of Hungarians in Pula can be traced in the period after World War II and most of the families, which migrated at the time still live there. This paper explores the reasons for their arrival, their organization through ethnic community institutions and interprets factors and dimensions of their ethno-cultural identity. Taking into account the status of the Hungarian minority in Pula both at the institutional and the individual level, and basing conclusions mainly on ethnographic material, special emphasis is placed on language as one of the key factors of Hungarian identity, although the members of the Hungarian minority in Pula have access to a repertoire of identities. Although the research takes into account the institutional level, i.e. the laws and ordinances as well as the public activity of minority associations at the city level, it is ethnographic data collected through observation of the minority associations’ activities and through interviews of members of the Hungarian minority that constitutes the central part of this research. Therefore, this paper does not aim to generalize or draw universal conclusions, but to describe the experiences of the respondents by positioning their statements, attitudes and experiences in an appropriate theoretical framework. The focus of this paper concerns the maintenance of ethnic identity among the members of the Hungarian minority in Pula. The key questions that motivate this paper have to do with the use of and attitudes toward the native (Hungarian) and majority (Croatian) language, the reasons for settlement in Pula, and the current status of the Hungarian minority as well as the potential problems of co-existence in a multicultural city.

anthropology; Pula; Hungarians; minority communities; ethnic identity; multiple identities; language

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