532 S. POGONYI Inevitably, in both countries, nationalist right-wing governments introduced the inclusive kin citizenship policies in order to strengthen the titular ethnic group’s symbolic claim over the state. But, paradoxically, the more governments facilitate the naturalization of non-resident putatively ‘ethnic kin’ populations, the easier they make it for non-resident individuals without deep sociological or cultural ties to become members of the nation. The Bulgarian case is instructive in this respect. In Bulgaria, the naturalization of putative external ethnic Bulgarians was facilitated through the introduction of a simplified language exam. But even this simplified language test proved too strict a barrier for alleged ‘ethnic’ Bulgarians living abroad. After exempting non-resident Bulgarians from the language test in 2001, the number of applications from ethnic Bulgarians rose significantly (Jileva & Smilov, 2013, p. 13). Since even the original language test was less than demanding, one wonders to what extent the putatively ethnic Bulgarian applicants for non-resident citizenship can be considered part of the Bulgarian ethnocultural nation. Under Bulgaria’s rules on ethnic Bulgarians, around two-thirds of North-Macedonia’s population of 2 million are eligible for Bulgarian citizenship on a preferential basis, though the number of North-Macedonian citizens who have acquired Bulgarian citizenship remained relatively low until 2010 (Hristova, 2010). For the period of 2002–2011, a total of 44,211 North-Macedonian citizens were granted Bulgarian citizenship on the grounds of Bulgarian origin, while another 20,668 individuals from Moldova were naturalized in the same period (Jileva & Smilov, 2013, p. 15). A more recent example of ‘ethnically’ preferential naturalization policy is Hungary’s 2011 citizenship law introduced by Viktor Orbán’s right-wing government in the name of ‘national reunification beyond the borders’ (Pogonyi, 2017). As of today, the Orbán government naturalized more than 1,000,000 non-resident individuals who had ancestors with citizenship in Greater Hungary. Both the Hungarian government that introduced the law as well as scholars discussing it agree that the fast-track naturalization of descendants of former Hungarian citizens was an ‘ethnic’ nationalist policy. In practice, however, facilitated ‘ethnic’ citizenship was made available for anyone who had ancestors with Hungarian citizenship. In many cases, successful applicants did not at all see themselves as ethnic Hungarian, and have only a very basic knowledge of the Hungarian language (Harpaz, 2019; Pogonyi, 2017). In Serbia as well as Ukraine, descendants of non-Hungarians with citizenship in the Hungarian Kingdom started to learn Hungarian so that they can naturalize in Hungary – and, more importantly, obtain an EU passport (Harpaz, 2019) – through the ‘ethnic’ preferential citizenship law. To illustrate the non-ethnic implications of the ‘ethnically’ preferential Hungarian naturalization regime, let me mention one of the examples that I encountered during my research on Hungarian naturalizations. Alim, a Macedonian citizen with Muslim background had a grandmother who was born in Vojvodina under the Hungarian Kingdom. After a long archival genealogy research process, Alim found out not only that his grandmother had Hungarian citizenship at birth, but also that she was of Jewish origin – quite a surprise even for his Macedonian Muslim parents. Despite the fact that his grandmother may not have spoken Hungarian, Alim became eligible for Hungarian citizenship. In order to get access to the European Union, he obtained all the necessary documents proving his grandmother’s Hungarian citizenship and he also started to learn Hungarian. Thanks to the Orbán government’s ‘ethnic’ citizenship policies and his Jewish grandmother who lived in territories that a century ago were part of the Hungarian Kingdom, Alim, the