This article analyzes the key factors behind the securitization of Ukraine’s small
ethnic Hungarian minority in recent years and how they affect local interethnic as
well as interstate relations. It draws on elite interviews conducted in the Ukrainian-Hungarian
borderland, and other sources including speech acts. Four underlying factors were
identified. The first two are Hungary’s kin-state aid and dual citizenship law, which
have empowered Ukraine’s ethnic Hungarians, with the community appearing larger and
potentially more threatening in the eyes of the majority population than its mere
size justifies. The other two factors are Ukraine’s language policy and Transcarpathia’s
future being subject of conspiracy theories in light of Russia’s invasion of eastern
Ukraine, which have negatively affected interethnic ties, although somewhat less in
the borderland than between Hungary and Ukraine at large. In Transcarpathia, our different
informants had diverging perceptions of who is stirring tensions but agreed that actors
from outside their region were to blame. Overall, what has emerged is a clash of Hungary’s
kin-state politics and Ukraine’s nation-state-building efforts. The article ends with
more general implications for kin- and host-state relations in times of conflict.
