Contact Zone Mercadillo: Roma and Public Space in Valladolid (Spain)

Abstract

The research presented here evolves around the Mercadillo Gitano in Valladolid (España). The article is a short version of the author’s master thesis with the same title, written and graded in 2017. Its aims were the elaboration of a perspective that could focus on the every-day construction of social difference on the one hand and the application of this perspective to a specific site on the other hand. Therefore, ideas from the so-called Spatial Turn and particularly Mary Louise Pratt’s concept Contact Zone were taken to the Mercadillo Gitano in Valladolid. Data was gathered through participant observation, interviewing and an archival research. In a first step, the emergence and institutionalization of this Contact Zone as part of the city’s public space was investigated from a production of space perspective. This allowed for making roles and interests of diverging actors transparent. In a second step, a microanalysis concerning interaction (contact) and the actual sites (zone) complemented the reflection on the everyday (re)production of social differences. The emerging perspective allowed for rendering boundary-making in Mercadillo Gitano theoretically and empirically graspable and thus broadened the possibilities of “speaking about” the city’s minority of Roma.