Permanent periphery – Characteristics of the Croatian–Hungarian border region

Abstract

In the past decades, accession to the European Union and the expansion of the Schengen area have created new social and economic opportunities in Hungary's peripheral regions. The varying rates of development of the border areas and their geographical and political peripherality have fundamentally impacted their growth potential. After a general macro-regional demographic overview, the study focuses on the Croatian–Hungarian border region because it is here that the negative demographic spiral is most evident among Hungarian border regions, with both natural decline and out-migration affecting the area. In addition to analyzing population data, we highlight a few general characteristics of the region: settlement networks, nationalities, and economic factors, all of which reflect demographic conditions. The research aims to answer the following questions: 1) How do negative demographic trends affect economic and spatial processes? and 2) Does the peripheral location of typically rural border regions necessarily determine their disadvantaged status?