Kardos Gábor

Gábor Kardos was born in 1956 in Budapest. He finished his J.D. at the Faculty of Legal and Political Sciences, Eötvös University, Budapest (1980). He has PhD. in International Law at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1995), and Doctoral Habilitation at the Eötvös University (2005). After graduation Gábor Kardos became Assistant Professor, and later lecturer in the Department of International Law, Faculty of Legal and Political Sciences, Eötvös University, Budapest. Since 2007 he has been a full time professor at the same faculty. The main teaching and research interests of Professor Kardos are International Law, International Human Rights Law, Law of European Union, International Protection of Minority Rights, and Non-Military Aspects of Security. Since 1998 he is a member of the Committee of Experts of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (Council of Europe).

Research at iASK

Homeland minorities, immigrant minorities: Mind the gap?

In post modern European societies the identity is a delicate question: there are large immigrant communities and more and more other social groups identify themselves along the lines of a particular identity and in a way or another majority might seem to be disappearing. At the same time the visible signs of obvious “otherness” on parade reconstitute the feeling of belonging to the majority and the amorphous majority regains its shape by redefining itself against them, mainly against immigrants. In those states where the minority rights of the immigrant minorities are basically confined to non-discrimination and freedom of religion, the latter has a special position. That provides a kind of general protection of identity because there is a significant overlap between religious and other forms of identity, namely ethnic and cultural identities. In the last two decades the strengthening of minority protection both at national and European level has been a factor in the stronger manifestation of minority identities. The successful vernacular mobilisation of different homeland ethnic groups and the ethnic conflicts led to inclusive legislation and then the legislation itself proved to be an invitation to minority consciousness. This is the challenge the immigrant communities are facing, they are more and more aware of the protection of the homeland minorities and they are more and more require the same status, they are in the process of Hegelian “struggles for recognition.” The proposed research tries to take into consideration the legal response and its implications, looking for an answer to two questions. What are the elements of the emerging minority legal status of the immigrant communities? What might be the consequence of their emerging status to the protection of homeland minorities?