Reconnecting landscape and labour: Representations of work in state socialist Hungary

Landscapes of labour emerged as an important concept for understanding the multiscalar nature of urban and regional economies during the formation of Anglophonic labour geography in the 1990s. However, interest in this concept has since declined somewhat. This article reconsiders landscapes of labour as a key analytical lens for examining state socialist Hungary in 1980. Drawing on primary sources from two regional newspapers, the article explores how workers were represented as actively shaping landscapes of labour. Employing an analytical framework from the labour regime literature, the empirical section demonstrates how representations of economic ‘external forces’, labour policies, and narratives of the ‘desired worker’ constituted central building blocks of the landscapes of labour. The findings reveal both parallels with structures identified by previous scholarship in capitalist countries and distinctive features of social relations in state socialist Hungary.