“In the Periphery of Periphery” – the Question-Marks of Borderness Reflecting to a Research in the North-eastern Part of the Great Plain

Abstract

The research of the questions of and the dividing and connecting role of border- ness has a distinguished importance with special regard to the current euroatlant process. However borders are important obstacles of the tendencies of globalisation and integration, where economic, social and spatial-ethnic questions have accumu- lated and remained up to now in both sides of the border. The borderlands and the settlements in the „peripheries of periphery" of the North-eastern part of the Great Plan are considered to be such a problematical regions. Therefor Great Plan II Re- search Program was launched in framework of the Strategic Researches of HAS in 1998. The complex analysis of the disadvantageous and borderland regions and settlements in the North-eastern part of the Great Plan (County Hajdú-Bihar and Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg) has constituted a part of this program. It also included an analysis based on a survey all the 119 settlements. The analysis based on the ques- tionnaire and the relating interview took into account the literature and some statis- tical databases too. The aim of the study is to draw out a shaded realistic picture from the situation of the borderland, reflecting the opinion of the municipalities also.

The question of the settlement municipalities and the complementary analysis proved that the traditionally underdeveloped situation of the examined region hasn't moderated, in fact it even increased after the change of regime in 1989. The settlements of the borderland regions should fmd the way by themselves to close up, to accelerate their development and to demolish their separateness in both economic and social meaning with the best exploitation of the advantages based on the endogenous resources and borderness. Though, the success of finding the way out self-effort and the chance of getting through from the „periphery of periphery" situation are unimaginable without any external (state sources) even on long terms.