The compelling story of Hungarian children living with Belgian families during the interwar period. Children who migrated without their families were noteworthy participants of interwar European ...migration history. Milk Sauce and Paprika tells the story of Hungarian children who were sent to Belgium in the framework of a humanitarian project between 1923 and 1927. Based on a wide variety of sources such as official documents, contemporary newspapers, photographs, family correspondences, biographies and interviews, this book examines the history of the Belgian-Hungarian child relief project and describes its social and cultural impacts on the families involved in both countries. This compelling story of one of the first mass European child migration movements offers new insights in the dynamics of national and religious communities. Furthermore, it sheds light on intimate family life and contemporary habits and values regarding parenting and co-parenting in the interwar period. Cutting across national and cultural borders, this monograph connects individual and collective memory with the experiences of childhood and migration.
Transnational adoption and child migration are often regarded as recent phenomena, yet there is a long history of children travelling without their families, settling and integrating in a foreign ...culture and environment. In the 1920s, thousands of Hungarian children went to Belgium for a six-month holiday within the framework of a humanitarian project. Although they were supposed to return to Hungary after their vacation, some of them stayed indefinitely with their Belgian families. By analyzing oral testimonies of the now elderly ‘children’ about their migration and childhood experiences in Belgium, we explore how they construct and reconstruct concepts such as childhood, vulnerability, and loyalty commitments, and show the crucial importance of maintaining birth family ties for the future development of transnationally adopted children.
The Past Must Be Given a Place Hajtó, Vera
The Hungarian historical review,
01/2023, Letnik:
12, Številka:
4
Journal Article
This article investigates the intergenerational effects of migration on the memories of Belgian families of Hungarian origin, focusing specifically on how these effects can prompt the second and ...third generations of migrant families to bring their private memories and identity constructions into the public sphere. Their social participation becomes a crucial element in their quest to uncover their families’ histories. While the memory of the migration experience was initially contained in the “archive” (the private sphere), it eventually transitions into the “canon” (the public sphere), becoming accessible to those outside the family circle. Using published biographies of second-generation members about their immigrant parents, photographic images, texts of a theatre play, group conversations on social media (Facebook), and interviews with members of the second and third generations, this article offers a varied source material to explore these questions. By pushing the boundaries of historical research and memory studies, it demonstrates that the memories of migration can have long-lasting effects that connect people and families with larger communities and the social sphere.
