Dreaming homogenous – power switches of history in public discourse in Hungary.

The waves of migration that hit Europe during 2015 are often labelled as the 'refugee crisis', however the term 'crisis' is doubly understood as that of refugees and that of European politics. Taking the latter view, the present article claims that if one wants to understand the differences between national responses, the concept of social memory is an analytically useful one. We take the case of the Hungarian response to the crisis and explain how the concept of the migrant has been a floating signifier in Hungarian discourse. This is not due to lack of actual migratory movements but because of mnemonic processes typical of Eastern Europe. In the second part of the paper we explain how the floating signifier of the migrant has been manipulated by the Hungarian government and especially Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. We argue that this was made possible by three features: the autocratic transformation of the structure of the public sphere; Orbán's ability to switch history on/off as he pleases; and four deeply rooted historical repertoires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]