Abstract
The migration of Romanian Korturare is analyzed with a focus on the transformation of three aspects of their funerary practices: place of burial, multi-sited funeral celebrations, and the use of communication technologies. This ‘mortuary focus’, which has not previously been applied to studies of international Romani migration, provides a better understanding of the interaction between territorial attachment and international mobility patterns. Observations based on ethnographic fieldwork are complemented by an analysis of social media use, audiovisual materials and a sample of 69 deaths. Localities of origin continue to be the preferred place for burial and collective memorialization, while funerals become multi-sited, involving both host towns and hometowns. The mediatization of death practices reinforces both of these tendencies. The transformation reflects the role of Korturare social organization in the migration process. The broad and densely nested family networks of the Korturare keep the possibility of multidirectional migration open and act as an adaptive resource by reproducing community life abroad. At the same time, they preserve the localities of origin as the common and privileged territory of the symbolic reproduction of family ties.
Highlights
The ‘mortuary focus’, the observation of what people do when a death occurs in the community (Zirh, 2012: 1768), is applied to the migrations of the Korturare2 Roma, a Romanian minority currently dispersed throughout Europe and North America
This paper aims to contribute to this literature by exploring the transformations and continuities of the Korturare funerary system, the interweaving of the tendency towards increased dispersion, the maintenance of territorial links with Romania and the emergence of transnational practices
Since 1990, the Korturare have undergone an intense migratory process; originally from the Northeastern regions of Romania, they are living in a dozen European countries and in North America
Summary
The ‘mortuary focus’, the observation of what people do when a death occurs in the community (Zirh, 2012: 1768), is applied to the migrations of the Korturare Roma, a Romanian minority currently dispersed throughout Europe and North America.. The importance of framing ‘Gypsies’ as autochthonous communities with sociocultural configurations that are the product of integration in local geographies and history (Olivera, 2012), rather than as exogenous groups ‘with no history’, has been put forward as a paradigm since the 1980s (Okely, 1983; Williams, 1984; Piasere, 1985; Stewart, 1987; Pasqualino, 1998) and adopted more recently by anthropological historians and ethnographers on Roma in Romania (Piasere, 2005; Berta, 2007; Olivera 2012; Asséo et al, 2017), as well as by scholars in the field of migration studies The latter explore how Roma’s local systems become transnational and cross-border and their sociocultural configurations change as a result of simultaneous insertion in the human environments and geographies of both places of migration and origin. The analysis looks at three dimensions: where the Korturare have buried their dead since migration started, how funeral rites have changed in response to the internationalization of the community map, and how communication technologies have affected this ‘transnationalization’ process
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