Trust and Threat: Discursive Interpretations of Migration in Hungary

Aim: The study aims to demonstrate how migration-related fears and social trust are interconnected in Hungarian society, with particular attention to the interpretive frames of irregular migration after 2015 and to the context of the post-socialist trust deficit. Methodology: The study adopts a theoretical-interpretive approach and is based on a synthesis of peer-reviewed Hungarian and English-language literature published between 2015 and 2025, complemented by seminal works addressing post-socialist trust structures. Drawing on both empirical and theoretical research, the analysis examines the framing role of political communication and explores the relationship between migration-related trust and fear in the Hungarian and broader Central and Eastern European context. Findings: The analysis suggests that the inhabitants’ sense of threat in Hungary is primarily caused by violations of rules and norms caused by irregular migrants and indirect information processing, while the lack of direct personal experience amplifies the thematizing, dramatizing, and categorizing effects of political and media discourses. The construction of migration as an issue of security, morality, and identity politics is linked to low levels of institutional and generalized trust: the fragility of trust increases experiences of unpredictability, which may intensify and stabilize migration-related fears. Hungarian attitudinal patterns can also be explained through Central and Eastern European regional specificities, where the cultural nation model, the trust deficit, and political communication jointly shape attitudes toward outsiders. Value: The novelty of the study lies in interpreting migration-related fears not merely as an external “migration effect,” but at the intersection of trust dynamics and discursive mechanisms. It also argues that public policy responses have not only an institutional but also a communicative (discursive) dimension: differentiated category use and trust-building language are relevant for perceptions of security and for social cohesion.