On Slow Dispossession: Post-Transition Authoritarian Governmentality and the Racial Politics of Private Property in Budapest

• In Event: Land, Property, Ownership at the Imperial Crossroads II

Abstract

This paper develops the concept of authoritarian governmentality defined here as the logics and tactics of rule that bind conduct to achieve the aims of government. In line with governmentality scholars, I understand authoritarian governmentality as one of many governing rationalities present within modern states. The goal of this mode of theorizing is to re-imagine authoritarianism as an always present tactic in the operation of modern states that officials employ differentially to racialized populations. I explore this concept in the implementation of private property laws in Roma dominated neighborhoods in Budapest in the 1990s. Beginning in 1990, Hungary underwent a process of rapid privatization, where flats across Budapest were sold at heavily discounted rates to sitting tenants. During this privatization sell off, district governments forbade the privatization of flats in Roma dominated areas using privatization ban lists—a technique to control urbanization processes under socialism. As a result, these flats remained in public hands. As the 1990s wore on, officials began to stigmatize Roma living in these flats as “squatters” that were complicating the efficient allocation of housing. In 1999, a Hungarian politician Robert Juharos crafted legislation known as Lex Juharos to swiftly evict squatters living in these districts. I argue that Roma dispossession in both of these instances was driven by an authoritarian governmentality to bind Romani conduct in the lead up to the forcible seizure of their housing.

Author

• Jonathan Dewes McCombs, U of Wisconsin-Eau Claire