Memories of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution: Narrating Gender and Migration

Abstract

The standard book on social history of Hungary defined the "typical migrant of 1956" as "younger than 25 years, male, a university student or skilled worker." If that is the case, there is no space for female migrants in this story. To make the picture even more gloomy, in 1956 the 175,082 Hungarians who left the country did so without leaving any documented or recorded written trace for traditional historical analysis. We also know that 25% of them were women. If this is the case with the 1956 emigrants, it is even more unlikely that we should find any traces of women who left Hungary before 1989 for political reasons. This invisibility is due to the absence of gender sensitive data and to the general assumption that agents of migration studies are men: that only they were going to emigrate. The chapter explores the construction of belonging and political citizenship among Hungarian female migrants after 1956 in a European context.