Minorities Research 13. [antikvár]

Judit Tóth Census in Hungary in 2011: migrants or ethnicity? Abstract Hungary belongs to those nation states that insert the question on ethnic, religious and linguistic affiliation of resident people in census. This approach is based on the idea of cultural nation taking into account the minority communities as static, objective, historical determinant and. continuous entities differing from the essentialism or constructivism in the notion of ethnicity and nation. Since 1870 the census will be in 2011 that contains the most sensitive issues of personal identity at a growing prejudice level against otherness and in anti-Roma attacks. This article analyses the minimal requirements of international migration statistics by Reg. 862/2007 and the Reg. 763/2008 on census in EUMember States that contain questions neither on language, nor religious and ethnic identification of residents. What are the possible purposes of these questions in the census in Hungary? The author intends to give answers on the logic ofethno-policy. 1. The purposes of census and statistics The recent developments in information technology, universal spread of its instruments, the protection of personal data, birth of new states (e.g. due to dissolution of Yugoslavia), or extended international migratory movements have strongly influenced the purpose and acceptance of census. For this reason the proposal on its replacement by aggregated data based on existing registers means a competitor to the expensive traditional census. The United Nations ECE and the EUROSTAT make efforts to iterate the two different methods