Demographic Nationalism and Biopolitical Repression

• In Event: Anxieties of Ageing and Demographic Nationalism in Southeastern Europe

Abstract

On the basis of media and elite interview analysis the paper investigates how various discourses of demographic nationalism construct ideal population development based on little or no migration and a boost in "local" fertility and the strengthening of demographic sovereignty in South Eastern Europe. It also analysis how (if at all) these discourses are related to the representation of ageing and the social problems and issues of this complex change. The paper will have a special focus on how the above discourses actually repress and reduce such representations to seeing the elderly as passive burdens for society and thus narrowing discursive options in finding ways out of the tension in the population development of South Eastern Europe. We will also discuss what alternatives to DN are present in these societies in the media and elite interviews.

Author

• Attila Melegh, Hungarian Demographic Research Institute