minority society
It is an ethnically self-organising institutional structure which creates “minority worlds” in the sociological sense within a given country, its own institutions operating in the mother tongue, so that the members of the community can live largely within this framework. It is this society, parallel to the national institutions dominated by the majority nation, that can facilitate the ethno-cultural reproduction of a given minority community. Many of the minority equivalents of majority state institutions are operating as non-profit organizations. In the public administration many local governments operate as minority institutions, often with the support of non-profit organisations as well. Despite the ethnically organised specialised institutions which do not cover the whole community and lack separate structures in some areas, the minority community cannot be considered a separate part of society. It only became accepted with the implementation of autonomy based on the cultural or personal principle.
Coming into existence of the parallel minority society assumes 1. a population that allows for the operation of specialised professional institutions; 2. a significant regional and local concentration; 3. a balanced ratio of rural to urban population; 4. a characteristic linguistic separation from the majority nation; 5. a mother country that is supportive of autonomous institutionalism. In the Hungarian context we can speak of such efforts in Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, and Ukraine.
Within the minority community the political sub-system can get a representative into the majority parliament due to the size of the ethnic group, but can only assert its interests through bargaining and government participation. The minority maintains politically controlled non-governmental umbrella organisations to finance the non-profit sector and claims (assumes the task of) distribution of resources provided by the state to the minority community. As more than half of Hungarians living beyond the borders live in settlements where they form the majority of the population, depending on the local government system in the country concerned, many specific minority issues can be addressed at the local level. The most comprehensive institutional field is the religious denominations operating in the Hungarian language, complemented by a significant system of church institutions. In the minority Hungarian communities people mainly watch the Hungarian-language media. A growing number of these are Hungarian TV channels and websites. Regarding radio and print media regional institutions have a dominant role. The education subsystem has an extensive ethnic institutional system with a full range of institutions. With the exception of vocational education the public education system is complete with a state-run network of mother-tongue schools. The scientific subsystem also operates in a separate institutional system, mostly in a non-profit framework. Public education has a dense network of institutions but in addition to NGO and state funding the role of municipalities and businesses is becoming increasingly important with stronger links to the institutional network in the motherland. We cannot speak of an independent economic subsystem but the ethnic consumer market is increasingly present in Hungarian communities beyond the borders.