Decaying professional authority amid a refugee crisis in Hungary, 1938–1942

Hungary experienced several territorial changes in the first half of the 20th century sparking waves of refugees including secondary teacher candidates. This paper investigates the deepening crisis of secondary professional institutes through the treatment of teacher students between 1938 and 1942 along with three research questions. First, what legal changes had been introduced to ensure the continuation of studies for the refugees? Second, how did professional institutions contribute to the conceptualization of these legal measures and what was their impact on the development of the Hungarian secondary teacher education institutions? Lastly, how were foreign teacher training systems perceived by the Hungarian authorities and professional institutions? Research questions are to be answered by the document analysis of archival sources preserved in the National Archives of Hungary, Budapest and Archives of Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. The findings suggest that the excessive regulatory role of the ministry limited the ability of professional institutions to form jurisdictional claims and thus determine the conditions of the theoretical and practical parts of the training. Furthermore, legislative measures introduced in the examined period dissolved the formation of professionality along standardized protocols, further deepening the deprofessionalization processes which had been ongoing for almost two decades by that time

Criminology · Political science · Refugee · Refugee crisis · Sociology · European history and politics · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · Law · Public Administration