In the summer months of 2015 weekly more than 10 thousand refugees crossed illegally the Hungarian borders on their way to Western Europe and mostly Germany. Many of them went through Budapest, since the Hungarian capital is also a transportation hub in the country. As the refugees camped at the Keleti (East) railway station, waiting for an opportunity to leave the country, activists of civil organisations helped them to get legal assistance, food, clothing and shelter. The Hungarian and the broader European media acknowledged the effort of these people. According to the general view, the helping groups also saved the “honour” of Hungarians, since the government started a harsh anti-refugee campaign.
These altruistic groups just rarely claimed to change government policies, rather they sought to conduct their activities uninterruptedly. When activists wish to present the ideal social and political arrangements through their actions is the core idea of prefigurative politics. The idea of prefigurative politics as a mean of social movements can be traced back to the 1970’s, but it was also used to understand certain segments of the global justice or the OWS movement (Yates 2015, Taylor 2013, Pickerill and Krinksky 2012). Even in the case of prefigurative action the addressee and the claimant could be identified, although the explicit analysis of claims making is scarce in the literature.
In my paper I will analyse how claims are made during prefigurative action. In order to achieve this, I will use the method of political claims analysis developed by Koopmans and Statham (1999). I wish to understand what forms, discursive elements and actions are used for claims making by groups of prefigurative actions.
