The Gypsy condition in Kiskunhalas: work, consumption, and indebtedness after socialism

The article outlines the recent history of the Gypsy minority in the town of Kiskunhalas, Bács-Kiskun county, with an emphasis on its changing economic situation. Gypsy households benefited from secure employment until the late 1980s. Some of them were able to profit from the embourgeoisement opportunities available to all citizens in the socialist mixed economy. Under postsocialist conditions, however, most Gypsies face uncertainty and hardship in everyday life. Theoretically, the article engages with the work of Michael Stewart, who has argued that the demise of socialism and the replacement of central planning and compulsory wage-labour by the freedoms of market society brought opportunities for Gypsies to prosper economically, as well as to reassert a cultural identity which had been stymied for decades. I argue that this libertarian perspective overlooks the very real disadvantages that most members of the minority experienced after 1990, and which they have continued to experience in different forms under Fidesz-led governments since 2010. Like the poorest segments of the ethnic Hungarian population, Gypsies are exposed to neoliberal capitalism in its distinctive postsocialist populist form. The article concludes with an exploration of everyday financialization: indebtedness entrenches class differences and has negative consequences for persons, households and communities.