Some aspects of the national identity of the Hungarian youth in Slovakia

The main reason of the decrease of the number of ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia is assimilation. According to demographic studies, assimilation can be detected mainly in the age group between 10–34 years. The starting point of this paper is that one of the micro-social key factors of assimilation is the state of national identity, and, if it is true indeed that it is more characteristic for people of young age that they have greater tendency to assimilate, then it must be manifested in their national identity as well. The author, on the basis of the results of a sociological research conducted in 2014 on a sample of 3000 respondents, analyses some aspects of the state of the national identity, namely the importance of values and the presence of key decisions with respect to the preservation of Hungarian identity. Comparing the answers of age groups 18–34, 35–55 year-old and 55-and-up, the author shows that the importance of these values decrease by the decreasing age and, at the same time, the probability of decisions promoting assimilation grows.