Nincs absztrakt.

Rural Hungary appears to have been anything but homogeneous after the change of regime in Hungary. The transition from Socialism into a market economy created insurmountable problems in several regions, mostly in the fields of economic restructuring, employment, unemployment and social composition. The picture is especially depressing in the northern region of Hungary, in the once flourishing settlements relying on mining and heavy industries, which had provided them with certain livelihood. The study focuses on villages surrounding the city of Ózd, where the survival and sustenance of the population was directly threatened by the closure of factories, plants and mines in the area. Alabán concentrates mainly on Farkaslyuk and the village of Somsály on the periphery of Ózd. Here, the memory of the halcyon days survives only in nostalgic reminiscences. The factory and its facilities, the mine, reading club, swimming pool, choir, brass band and sports club are all mosaic pieces from another age, which had once defined the everyday lives of the people living in the Farkaslyuk Miners’ Estate and Somsálybánya. The common features of both Farkaslyuk and Somsálybánya include social restructuring, negative migration processes due to manifold reasons such as demographic processes and the lack of employment opportunities, deep poverty and subsequent social ghettoisation, the gradual deterioration and disintegration of cultural and educational facilities, and last but not least, a hopeless vision for the future. With the aim of instigating new research, the study examines crisis indicators in the field of economy, society and culture, which often appeared together and had cumulative effect. It also presents collective and individual life narratives and survival strategies, which are often different to the experiences of people in similar Hungarian regions.

The demographics and social composition of the district (later, micro-region) of Ózd in Northern Hungary was shaped by various historical factors. Industrialisation, which began in the mid-nineteenth century, followed by world wars, annexation, land reforms, forced industrialisation and reorganisation of agriculture, and finally the crisis and liquidation of heavy industries, were determinative for the lives of the people living in the region in the past hundred years. In the twentieth century, intensive immigration to the region caused a major population increase, which eventually gave way to a dramatic decrease due to the regression of the iron industry after 1985. During the 1970s shortage of steel in Hungary, the steel industry continued to use obsolete technologies and the product structure was never reorganized to satisfy the demands of international markets. By the 1990s, mining ceased altogether, heavy industry plants stopped operation, and the Ózd Metal Works was divided into parts, and event their successors are long gone by now. Besides Ózd itself, the agglomeration and nearby settlements were in the same position: their development ground to a halt, new opportunities were hard to find. Contrary to the national tendencies at the time, the job market entered an unfavourable phase. While the number of pensioners was above national average, the majority of the unemployed were young (under 35) with no education and technical skills. With the disappearance of the formerly prevalent metal and mining industries, the re-employment of people over 40 became very difficult. Although the number of registered unemployed dropped between 1995 and 2005, the figures were still very high in January 2005 (nearly 5000 people), and the situation has not improved since then. Analysing the realignment of the layers of local society, the study explores the predominance of industrial workers, the distribution of employment by economical branches in three settlements, and the most important elements of the crisis that evolved after the change of regime in Hungary.