Bulgarian Roma at the Dawn of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

With the establishment of the state of emergency in Bulgaria on 8 March 2020 due to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, several restrictive measures aimed at social distancing were being introduced, to which the public had a contractionary reaction. The so-called “COVID-19 nests” led to the quarantine of a number of settlements. The ski-resort town of Bansko and the village of Panicherevo were the first isolated settlements targeted by our study. We focused on the reactions of the local Roma population, which were largely determined by their perceptions and understandings of infectious disease. The research methodology included ethnographic field research carried out in 2021. The data from the semi-structured interviews and focus-group discussions presented local responses to the pandemic, which to a large extent also represented the diversity of attitudes not only in the Roma community but also in Bulgarian society. The main questions we focused on were the great extent to which Roma are creating ethno-cultural strategies to cope/overcome the pandemic and how they are responding to the emergency measures and subsequent vaccination at the national and local levels.