Authors

Discussion

The recent intensification of kin-state engagement in Central and Eastern Europe after the financial crisis of 2008 has been accompanied by a multiplication in the forms it has taken. At the same time, we have witnessed substantive changes in their aims. Many states have addressed the labour shortages through policies that facilitate the immigration of specific categories of co-ethnics abroad to their respective kin-state. Examples include Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Czechia. This paper examines the increasing prevalence of the neoliberal state rationality in the relations between kin-state – co-ethnics abroad focusing on Hungary’s kin-state engagement in Slovakia. Whilst since 2001 in Europe, a kin-state’s engagement has been defended for it provides protects and promotes the identity and culture of specific minority groups, the recent changes place it at odds with its normative defence. Building on the cultural disadvantage argument, I discuss here the impact of the neoliberalisation of kin-state engagement upon the cultural accommodation and socio-economic integration of the ethnic kin in their home-countries.