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Deindustrialization is a major burden on workers' health in many countries, calling for theoretically informed sociological analysis. Here, we present a novel neoclassical sociological synthesis of the lived experience of deindustrialization. We conceptualize industry as a social institution whose disintegration has widespread implications for the social fabric. Combining Durkheimian and Marxian categories, we show that deindustrialization generates ruptures in economic production, which entail job and income loss, increased exploitation, social inequality, and the disruption of services. These ruptures spill over to the field of social reproduction, generating material deprivation, job strain, fatalism, increased domestic workload, anomie, community disintegration, and alienation. These ruptures in social reproduction are sources of psychosocial stress, through which deindustrialization gets embodied as ill health and dysfunctional health behavior. We substantiate this framework through the extensive qualitative thematic analysis of 82 life history interviews in Hungary's rust belt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of labor in the Eastern European post‐socialist context considers profound social transformations, including the amplification of economic inequalities, deindustrialization, the restructuring of the working class, and the formation of capital. At the intersection of these social processes, the aim of the research is to document the process of migration undertaken by a large group of miners from the Maramureș area of Romania to different mining regions in Hungary and the consequences for ex‐industrial areas. To this end, it concentrates on capturing the working narratives of miners that stay miners on the context of migration and unveils specific differences between regions regarding the way in which post‐socialism works. In order to examine the way in which a common moment for both countries happen discordantly, the research is composed of interviews with miners that migrated to Hungary and of observations at the location where they migrated from, the Băiuţ mine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the economic-policy background of structural developments in industry is known from the previous chapter, this chapter will first outline recent changes in the macrostructure of industry. This dwindling of industry that we describe leads to the question of the role of the state in the restructuring process, with some questions on the possible scope of current industrial policy in Hungary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two and a half decades, the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, including Hungary, have become an integral part of the global economy. Following the change of regime, the rate of foreign direct investment increased, modern industries emerged and exports became significant. However, this process was halted by the global economic crisis in many advanced and transition economies, and the concept of 'reindustrialization' emerged as one of the economic policy responses to the new challenges generated by the crisis. In our paper, we study whether reindustrialization is present following the lowest point of the crisis in one of the post-socialist countries of the EU, in Hungary. If so, in which regions and industries, and under what conditions? Our research indicates that reindustrialization can be generally observed only in a few rural regions after 2009, limited to only one or two industries, while, for instance, in the capital and in its agglomerations and in urban regions with large research universities, deindustrialization is more likely to take place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalisation has led to the dominance and geographical expansion of urban areas. Companies consider a complex set of criteria when deciding on their locations, including the agglomeration area and the presence of similar companies or related businesses. This study examines the spatial distribution and industrial clustering of companies within the agglomeration of Győr, Hungary's sixth-largest city. The sample comprises 256 companies across 68 settlements, with data processed through map, quadrat and industry analysis. The analyses identified six settlements within the agglomeration where nearly half of the companies are located, five factors that seem to facilitate company location, and five main industrial sectors, four of which are closely related. The article concludes that the agglomeration area of Győr is characterised by a high degree of spatial concentration of companies, industrial clustering and the emergence of industry sub-centres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Czech and Hungarian labour markets have undergone significant changes: European Union (EU) accession and various employment and job creation programmes that have all left their mark on employment. The authors analysed the two major economic crises -- the 2008 global economic crisis and Covid-19 pandemic -- and their impact on the labour markets of the examined countries from a regional perspective. The phases of change in the examined unemployment rates and the reasons for this change have shown that the crises have affected the employment situation in the regions of the countries in different ways, degrees and lengths of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Degrowth Doughnut (a modification of the original Doughnut visualization of boundaries and foundations created by economist Kate Raworth) can be considered a visualization tool for assessing the current environmental and social capacity of a country to transform into an ecologically and socially sustainable modus operandi. Its sufficiently rich set of criteria, including cultural, socio-economic and biophysical indicators, gives us an overall picture of the problems to be dealt with and the strengths to build on in the immediate future. Its simple boundary-threshold structure presents limiting and aspirational targets in a single image. As such, it is also a tool that can aid eco-social policymaking to prioritize decisions and seek synergies between choices made. This research will present the Hungarian Degrowth Doughnut and use it as a case study when applied to the aims and expected impacts of Hungary's operational National Clean Development Strategy. We will illustrate the degrowth-relevant priorities and assess the adequacy of the responses proposed by the Strategy, providing a critical analysis of the national policy options. Behind such climate and sustainability strategies are always a wealth of important value choices and moral considerations. Is there a safe and just operating space in the minds of the Hungarian policymakers? To what extent, if at all, are the fundamental principles of post-growth theories incorporated into a Hungarian sustainability strategy? We believe that a case study like this can also provide inspiration for further practical application of the Degrowth Doughnut elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An unprecedented mortality crisis struck Eastern Europe during the 1990s, causing around seven million excess deaths. We enter the debate about the causes of this crisis by performing the first quantitative analysis of the association between deindustrialisation and mortality in Eastern Europe. We develop a theoretical framework identifying deindustrialisation as a process of social disintegration rooted in the lived experience of shock therapy. We test this theory relying on a novel multilevel dataset, fitting survival and panel models covering 52 towns and 42,800 people in 1989–95 in Hungary and 514 towns in European Russia in 1991–99. The results show that deindustrialisation was directly associated with male mortality and indirectly mediated by hazardous drinking as a stress-coping strategy. The association is not a spurious result of a legacy of dysfunctional working-class health culture aggravated by low alcohol prices during the early years of the transition. Both countries experienced deindustrialisation, but social and economic policies have offset Hungary's more immense industrial employment loss. The results are relevant to health crises in other regions, including the deaths of despair plaguing the American Rust Belt. Policies addressing the underlying causes of stress and despair are vital to save lives during painful economic transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to fill a gap in critical smart city scholarship regarding the Central Eastern European (CEE) context. To this end, smart city understandings and practices in Hungary's five (non-capital) major cities are examined through a discourse-analytical focus on relevant municipal planning documents, existing interventions and key actors' interpretations. The paper concludes that although smart city building in Hungary in many ways aligns with trends in the Global North and South, there are also notable differences that need to be contextualized in the country's historically shaped trajectory of urban (policy) development, especially its post-socialist institutional path-dependencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Borders are particular (in-between) spaces: they have this side and the other side, which involve several real and imaginary spaces at the same time. For minorities, "beyond the borders" is also a specific space of language use. This paper discusses the correlations between minority bilingualism and social structure characteristics based on sociological surveys, taking as approach the sociology of space and John Ogbu's ecological cultural model of schooling. It aims to offer an overview of my research carried out on this topic and tries to provide some references for rethinking the sociological implications of minority education considering the experiences of three decades since the fall of communism in Romania. The main results of this research – in concordance with other findings of similar inquiries – show that a mother-tongue education for ethnic Hungarian children in Romania is a necessary but not sufficient condition for reducing the structural gap that Hungarians in Transylvania have inherited from the 20th century. This study is centred on the aspects of interrelation between the language of education and labour market, more specifically on those linked to the attitudes and patterns of behaviour towards the official language, with particular focus on the role that languages play in the society and, in a narrower sense, in self-positioning on the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a new conceptual framework to analyze the national-populist mutation of neoliberalism in foreign investment-dependent economies. By extending the emerging literature on the mutation of neoliberalism, the article challenges the conventional view of populism as a revolt against liberal capitalism and businesses. Following theory-testing process tracing, the article substantiates this theoretical framework through a detailed mixed-method study of the strategic test case of Viktor Orbán's Hungary. Utilizing new empirical material on businesses and policymakers, the article shows how the polarization of the business class rooted in global dependency structures, in interaction with a rising group of nationalist technocrats, has contributed to the national-populist mutation of neoliberalism. National-populist neoliberalism entails a new power bloc, a new compromise between national and transnational capital. It has preserved the core tenets of neoliberalism while modifying some of its peripheral elements and cutting back on avant-garde excesses to ensure the political viability of neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of Industry 4.0 (Fourth Industrial Revolution) was for the first time presented in Germany as an industrial modernization program. Nowadays, the Industry 4.0 revolution is a highly discussed topic as industrial production is one of the most important economic sectors in the European Union. Due to the lack of skilled laborers in the EU countries, industrial transformation and digitalization seem to constitute necessary evolutionary steps. Current demographic trends and projections of the future workforce composition are showing warning signals. The aim of this article is to introduce the concept of Industry 4.0 (or I4.0) in Hungary– a member of the Visegrad Group and the EU – until 2030. The article will provide the basic statistics regarding I4.0. Based on the available data, the efficiency of the I4.0 policy pillars will be evaluated. Furthermore, possible solutions to problems regarding adopting I4.0 in the Hungarian environment will be listed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationalism is back with a renewed force. Hungary is a virulent example of the new nationalist ascendancy. As the country was a former liberal star pupil, Hungary's neo-nationalist turn has been puzzling researchers for years. This study goes beyond the entrenched polarisations in the literature by highlighting the dynamic interplay between culture, structure and identity. It proposes to conceptualise Hungary's neo-nationalist turn as a Polanyian countermovement against commodification, globalisation and deindustrialisation. The article presents the results of a thematic analysis of 82 interviews with workers in four towns in Hungary's rustbelt and highlights how the multiscalar lived experience of commodifying reforms violated an implicit social contract and changed workers' narrative identities. 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the Hungarian government policy with special attention to democracy, its economy, and the role of power. Other topics mentioned in this article include the role of the European debt crisis as well as the Hungarian economic condition, the important role of capitalism, and the of lobbying in Hungary.

The article presents a study concerning the impact of the regional policy of the European Union on the method of demarcating the beneficiary regions in Hungary. It explores the role of the demarcation of the beneficiary regions as one of the key tasks of the regional policy as well as offers a historical overview of the regional inequalities in Hungary. The study demonstrates the consideration of the Hungarian regional policy of European Union trends during the demarcation of eligible areas.

Compared to cities in the more developed Western countries, significant changes in the industrial bases of Eastern European cities were rather belated, and the process only accelerated after 1989 when radical economic and social reforms were introduced. The main objectives of this study are to reveal the most important similarities and differences in the spatial impacts of post-socialist industrial transformation on the major Hungarian cities (Budapest, Debrecen, Győr, Miskolc, Pécs and Szeged). The capital city and other major cities display divergent development trends owing to the changes in the post-socialist industrial space and landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, and especially since the late 1970s, the industry and industrial areas of Western cities have undergone considerable restructuring. In east European cities, however, these changes began later and accelerated only after 1989, when radical political change permitted economic and social reforms. This study aims to examine the most important trends in the restructuring of industrial areas in Budapest. In particular, the study considers: how industrial restructuring affected the spatial structure of industry, the urban space and land use and, whether and to what extent these changes are similar to or different from processes in western and other east European cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the role of foreign direct investment in the economic restructuring of Hungary. Industrial development in Hungary in the early 1990s; Types of crises that affected Hungarian firms facing privatization; Options and tools for industrial policy.