Roma Identity Research Articles

Children's Roma Literary Protagonist with a Social Disadvantage in the Emotional Education

Author of the paper deals with the current issue which is the co-existence of Romany students (Roma minority social group) coming from the socially disadvantage backgrounds and marginalized Roma communities together with the non-Roma students from the major society in Slovakia in school inclusion settings. In this process, the author attaches significant importance for the development not only of cognitive (intellectual quotient – IQ), but also of emotional intelligence (emotional quotient – EQ) of all the students through artistic pictures of the Roma people coming from socially disadvantaged backgrounds marked by poverty a compliance with internal rules of the Roma identity (romipen) in the Slovak literature for children and youth. In this regard, author roots in the artistic delineation of emotional world of the Romany child protagonist – boy Lajko in an auto-biographical novel from Romany writer L'udovít Didi Stories blessed by the wind with the subtitle On the Romany soul, where the author displayed fates of people in very unusual way. Child literary protagonist from socially disadvantaged backgrounds perceives the social differences very sensitively in the intentions of own, minority society as well as in the co-existence of Roma and non-Roma people. Observation and empathetic experiencing of the negative emotional world of Romany child protagonist, the author used within emotional education and development of emotional intelligence of Roma and non-Roma students in the school inclusion settings in Slovakia.

Social Identity and Role Models

We present a lab-in-the-field experiment and surveys of marginalised Roma children in Slovakia to examine whether reminding Roma of their ethnicity reduces their performance in a cognitive task. Research on social identity and stereotypes has documented that when individuals feel their social group is negatively stereotyped in a domain their performance declines, which can reinforce discrimination. In an effort to break the cycle of negative stereotypes we remind Roma of either Roma or non-Roma role models. We find that the activation of a Roma's ethnicity reduces cognitive performance. In contrast Roma exposed to Roma role models outperform those reminded of their ethnicity and also non-Roma role models. We then attempt to understand the channels through which social identity and role models effect performance. We show that priming a Roma's identity has a direct effect on confidence, decreasing performance.

Changing Roma Identity: A New Kind of Double Identity and How To Model It

Changing Roma Identity: A New Kind of Double Identity and How To Model It

Roma Identity as an Expert-Political Construction

The creation of an EU Framework for national Roma integration strategies (2011) marks a significant step in the politicisation of Roma identity by ensuring a further increase in the number of initiatives, projects and programmes explicitly targeting Roma. The Framework itself is part of a process that began with postcommunist transition and which has produced historically unprecedented levels of Roma political activism along with a proliferation of national and transnational policy initiatives focussed on Roma identity. In seeking to explain this contemporary political phenomenon, the article argues that Roma is an identity constructed at the intersection of political and expert knowledge by various actors, such as policymakers, Romani activists, international organizations and scholars. This political-expert identity is applied to groups that are not bounded by a common language, religion, cultural practice, geographic location, occupation, physical appearance or lifestyle. The article explores how this collation of disparate populations into a notional political community builds upon a centuries-old Gypsy legacy. It scrutinizes five strands of identification practices that have contributed to the longue durée development of today’s Roma as an epistemic object and policy target: police profiling of particular communities; administrative surveys; Romani activism; Roma targeted policies; quantitative scientific research. The article argues that the contemporary economic and political conditions amidst which the politicisation of Roma identity is occurring explain how the ideological and institutional construction of the ethnic frame tends toward the reinforcement of the exclusion of those categorised as Roma, thus increasing the perceived need for Roma policy initiatives. A self-sustaining cycle has been created where Roma knowledge identifies Roma problems requiring a policy response, which produces more Roma knowledge, more needs and more policy responses. Yet, there are consequences to racialising public discourse by presenting Roma as both problematic and essentially different from everyone else. Hostility towards Roma has increased in many states indicating that the expert framing of Roma groupness affects social solidarity by disconnecting and distancing Roma from their fellow citizens.

Implementation of Roma Inclusion Policies: Why Defining the Problem Matters

The concept of “Roma exclusion” has come to dominate political discussions about the marginalization of the largest ethnic minority. Placed at the center of the European Union political agenda, it recognized that Roma poverty has multiple and interrelated causes, which require multifaceted policy responses. Nevertheless, while the concept has acquired strategic connotations, by stressing socio-economic processes it has remained open to different interpretations. These are influenced by political perceptions of Roma identity and minority rights, as well as domestic policy approaches to equality. The pivotal instability in the discourse concerns the question of whether exclusion is a characteristic feature of contemporary European societies or a living condition visited on particular individuals and ethnic groups. This article critically examines the discourse on Roma exclusion adopted in the framework of European cohesion policy. Building on implementation and equality scholarship, it argues that every postulated solution has built into it a particular representation of what the problem is, and it is these representations and their implications that need to be discussed as potential causes of policy success or failure. The article presents key findings from the empirical investigation of Structural Funds (SF) programming (2007–2013) implemented in two convergence regions (Andalusia and Eastern Slovakia), which confirm that domestic discourse shapes the scope and quality of SF Roma inclusion projects.

Roma Empowerment and Social Inclusion Through Work-Integrated Learning

The basis for this article was a health promotion program based on participatory action research and work-integrated learning (WIL). Seven Roma people were employed and trained to work as local coordinators to empower the local Roma community by strengthening their participation in society and their sense of community, as well as to promote self-led integration. The study aimed to analyze the program from the Roma coordinators’ perspectives, focusing on perceived individual empowerment and perceptions of contribution to the common good and to community empowerment. The findings, based on qualitative data, primarily interviews with the Roma coordinators, indicated that the WIL approach, the participatory nature of the program, and the trust and support from the Roma colleagues and non-Roma facilitators were essential for the development of empowerment. Three main themes emerged that portrayed the participants’ psychological empowerment: strengthened Roma identity, a sense of power, and a sense of enculturated social inclusion.

Identity shift: The Case of Roma People in the European Union

In the EU 28, the Roma people are the largest European minority. Unevenly spread, having in almost all the countries a peripheral social position and often generating harsh problems due to this position, the Roma had got, in the last two decades, a clear conscience of their ethnic identity. Moreover, the Roma elites are speaking about a “Roma stateless (European) nation”. In this respect, the Roma became a geopolitical factor that cannot be neglected. The paper presents a series of results of a field research on Roma identity, achieved this year in urban and rural areas form nine Romanian counties and in Bucharest. There were more than 60 in depth interviews with adult persons that identified themselves as Roma, belonging both to the elite (high educated persons, occupying official and/or prestige positions) and to ordinary social classes.

The work of Sisyphus: Squaring the circle of Roma recognition

Most special issues on Roma minorities want to alert readers to the devastating consequences of racist public attitudes and misdirected public policy. Here we don't shy away from such issues, but we also want to challenge our own scholarship and ask some fundamental questions about how we, as academics, are approaching such research. In this introduction the context of the special issue is explored, both in terms of the historic backdrop of an expanding European Union and the academic theoretical framework of minority integration. Major critical questioning – such as broader questions around migration, race and ethnicity discourses – are still lacking when it comes to research on or with Roma minorities. Our main aim is to move debates on from continually describing who Roma people are and what they are doing, to questioning: who defines who is Roma, when and why? What happens in policy-making, research, everyday interactions? This approach sees an understanding of recognition, representations and power dynamics as fundamental to understanding the positionings of minorities who can also be marginalised or feel disenfranchised. This introduction to the special issue highlights the importance of deeply conceptualising issues around minority integration alongside empirical knowledge of how Roma identities become implicated in and through different modalities of mobilisation. Contributions to this special issue speak to debates in minority politics and identity studies along with migration and race/ethnicity discourses. This indicates that the experiences of, and discourses surrounding Roma minorities reflect the fundamental concerns of social science research about identity, ethnicity, cohesion and change.

Roma as a political identity: Exploring representations of Roma in Europe

This article explores some of the myriad representations of Roma in Europe and argues that this proliferation makes it more difficult for policymakers to formulate coherent interventions, for academics to agree on a common conceptual language and for the majority to understand the inter-connected problems facing Roma communities. ‘Representations’ refers to how the community is understood by itself as well as by others. Whilst no community retains an uncontested image of itself and its identity, Roma communities have little or no control over how they are represented in the public sphere. Usually, representations of Roma originate and are sustained by non-Romani actors including international organisations, national governments and the majority. Of course, Roma communities have attempted to influence how they represent themselves externally to challenge negative stereotypes and internally, to raise a political consciousness and foster solidarity. Relatedly, the political representation of Roma is particularly important due to their weak political positioning in local, national and transnational contexts but also because it highlights the disparity between contested questions of who Roma are and devising policy interventions to address socio-economic and political exclusion. This article discusses a select number of prevalent Roma representations and links the representation of Roma identity to the public presence and agency of Romani communities.

Roma art: Theory and practice

“Reading the texts of Frantz Fanon, bell hooks, Walter Mignolo, Gayatri Spivak, Peggy Piesche and relating their ideas to the current state of capitalism, migration, racism, class, gender, etc., it became necessary to reform and re-formulate our existing vocabulary for the description and representation of Roma.”1 This essay applies these new frameworks of understanding to the interpretation of works by Roma contemporary artists. The artistic careers mentioned in the essay demonstrate the operation of structural oppression towards the Roma, and offer models on how to revolt against this oppression and on how to reject the majority’s dominance in order to construct new Roma identities. The Roma artists appear in contemporary art (canon) as incoherence, threat or a dangerous element hindering its systematic operation. Their art is organized around the question of visibility; and on how they can rewrite or modify the mainstream discourse once they arrive at the position of visibility.

Pilotní výzkum v etnografii

This article discusses the importance of a pilot study when undertaking qualitative inquiry. One of the fundamental characteristics of qualitative research is the emerging design. This means that research question(s) may be adjusted, the methodology of data collection modified and the place changed after entering the field. The paper presents my own experience with the transformation of a research design during the research process. The subject of my research was the interaction between the Roma and the majority population, which I decided to investigate through the ethnographic approach. The necessary preliminary analysis was conducted. However, after entering the field, I discovered that the research agenda was in conflict with the nature of the environment. It was necessary to find a new line of inquiry which took me a considerable amount of time. The question is whether it could be avoided by a pilot study implementation. In order to assess the role of this method, I created a virtual pilot study. It presents, in detail, the specific procedures used and their utilization. Although my field activities met a number of parameters of the pilot study, the main point was not implemented – a fundamental change in the research design. The purpose of this paper is to initiate a discussion on the usefulness of a pilot study in ethnography. It could be interesting especially for beginning researchers, and / or for those wishing to do research in hard-to-reach groups. The text itself is written in reflexive form. It also suggests some of the findings related to the theoretical grasp of the Roma identity and identification.

Poverty and the Formation of Roma Identity in Hungary: Evidence from a Representative Panel Survey of Adolescents

This paper reports the findings from an analysis of the ethnic identification choices of adolescents in Hungary. Using a representative panel survey of adolescents in Hungary we test the hypothesis that poverty shapes how adolescents identify and conditions the transmission of identification in families. Our results indicate that Roma identification is part of dual Roma and Hungarian identification and there is substantial variation in identification both across generations and for respondents across survey waves. We find that children of mixed-ethnic families are more likely identify themselves as Roma in poor families than in more affluent ones. Our longitudinal analyses indicate that changes in economic hardship are statistically significantly associated with changes in ethnic identification, but the estimated magnitudes are modest.

Sampanis v. Greece: Discrimination, Disrespect, and Romani Identity on the EU Frontier

This article examines Greek Romani identity from an exogenous viewpoint focused not on who Romani people think and feel they are, but on what others make of them, through official discourse, political action, and educational policy. This article combines a normative argument about social justice as recognition (Axel Honneth) with an empirical case study of the confrontation of a diasporic group (Pontic Greeks from the former Soviet Union) with Romani parents and children at the doorstep of a Greek school. This was the occasion for a European Court of Human Rights decision involving various nongovernmental organizations and Greek government ministries. This article argues that the dynamic interplay between official and unofficial actors in securing access of Greek–Roma children to schooling has the effect, however unintended, of framing rather narrow possibilities for the development of a positive Roma identity.

Symbols and Rituals in the Mobilisation of the Romani National Ideal

AbstractThis article analyses recent attempts of Roma/Gypsy organisations to construct a pan‐Romani ethnic‐national identity. It is argued that although Roma do not fit the classical picture of a nation, in the globalised world such a project of transnational or diasporic identity may be viable in spite of the fragmentation of Romani communities. The article presents two groups of rituals employed by the Romani political movement: linguistic rituals, associated with the attempt to introduce an umbrella concept of ‘Roma’, and rituals of remembrance, which ‘authenticate’ certain streams of Romani history to introduce among Roma a sense of a common past. The article concludes that the ritual approach may be an efficient method to study the project of Romani national identity. With functions similar to religious ritual, Romani political rituals form a bridge between empirical Roma identity and the projected national identity, although in other contexts there may be little communication between them.

Defining Roma Identity in the European Court of Human Rights

This article is an evaluation based on a selection of the European Court of Human Rights’ case law concerning Roma people, namely the three main decisions dealing with the right to a Gypsy way of life. In those cases, the Court interpreted the right to respect for private and family life as giving rise to a ‘positive obligation to facilitate the Gypsy way of life’. This obligation involves a definition of Roma identity and reveals that the Court’s position, founded on specific perceptions of Romanity is restrictive, distorted and stereotyped. Indeed, regarding this European legal protection, I wonder whether the legal conception of Roma identity conveyed by the Court is relevant, since it does not always accord with sociological or anthropological studies on that topic, taking into account a constructivist approach of identity, nor with the description of a wide range of members of that people. First, this article aims at underlying which stereotypes dealing with Roma identity are involved in the Court’s discourse. Second, it shows how these ‘manipulated conceptions’ are fed by the arguments of Roma applicants and those of the respondent State.

Violence and Gender in the Globalized World: The Intimate and The Extimate

Contents: Preface, Charlotte Bunch Introduction: on violence and gender, and global connections, Sanja Bahun-Radunovic and V.G. Julie Rajan Part I Revealing the Gaps: Indigenous women's anti-violence strategies, Yifat Susskind Going beyond the universal-versus-relativist rights discourse and practice: the case of Malaysia, Sharon A. Bong Microcredit and violence: a snapshot of Kerala, India, Valsala Kumari. Part II Enclosures and Exposures: People behind walls, women behind walls: reading violence against women in Palestine, Rose Shomali Musleh Algerian adolescents caught in the crossfire, Meredith Turshen The after-war war of genders: misogyny, feminist ghettoization, and the discourse of responsibility in post-Yugoslav societies, Svetlana Slapsak A call for a nuanced constitutional jurisprudence South Africa, Ubuntu, dignity, and reconciliation, Drucilla Cornell in collaboration with Karin Van Marle. Part III Bordered Subjectivities, Global Connections: Introduction Litigating international human rights claims of sexual violence in the US courts: a brief overview of cases brought under the Alien Tort Statute and Torture Victim Protection Act, Jennifer M. Green The traffic in 'trafficked Filipinas': sexual harm, violence, and victims voices, Sealing Cheng Victims, villains, saviors: on the discursive constructions of trafficking in women, Loretta Ihme Ethnicity and gender in the politics of Roma identity in the post-communist countries, Angela Kocze. Part IV Aesthetics and Gendered Transformations: Introduction Over her dead body: talking about violence against women in recent Chicana writing, Deborah L. Madsen When theater becomes a crusade against violence: the case of V-Day, Marta Fernandez-Morales Index.

The Politics of Roma Migration: Framing Identity Struggles among Romanian and Bulgarian Roma in the Paris region

The aim of this paper is to understand how identity shapes the politics of Roma migration at European, national and local scales. I studied Romanian and Bulgarian Roma migrants living in slums around Paris through participant observation and in-depth interviews. I analyse the interplay of political and social intervention concerning this population, with an emphasis on humanitarian medical intervention. In these interactions, the Roma identity is often ethnicised, and the Roma in turn use this identity construction in their daily struggles with public institutions in order to gain more control over their lives. Their migration is the source of a new form of urban marginalisation, which continues despite both Romania's and Bulgaria's EU accession.

The emergence, structure and development of ethnic identity during childhood: The case of Roma identity

This study investigates the emergence, development and structure of ethnic identity during childhood. Forty Roma children living in Greece aged between 2.8 and 11.9 years answered questions about their awareness/recognition of four aspects of their ethnic identity-namely place of habitation, traditional costumes, the Roma language, and early betrothal of children-their identity and their sense of stability and constancy. The study also investigates how the children feel about the abandonment of those four aspects. The evidence from the current data supports the hypothesis that awareness of ethnic identity emerges before the age of 4. Moreover, this study offers direct empirical evidence of the multidimensionality of ethnic identity. A model of three concentric rings is proposed, extending from a core containing the most highly valued aspects of ethnic identity to the outer annulus that comprises the nonpermanent and nonstable aspects of ethnic identity. The aspects in each annulus differ in terms of the development of the sense of stability and constancy and the feelings associated with loss of the aspects in question. Even the youngest participants considered the aspects in the core to be stable and constant as well as emotionally charged; and even the 11-year-olds did not consider the aspects contained in the outer, more fluid annulus as stable and constant aspects of their ethnic identity. The development of an aspect is determined by what the majority of adults in a society, at a particular time in history, consider to be most important.

Roma Identity: Contrasting Constructions

La hausse de l’implantation à Hamilton en Ontario d’un grand nombre de familles rom originaires de Hongrie et demandant le statut de réfugiés a posé une gageure aux servives locaux dans les domaines de la santé, des services sociaux, de l’éducation, de l’immigration et de la justice. Le Projet Rom visait en général à promouvoir une meilleure compréhension des peuples rom et de leur culture afin d’informer les intervenants des divers services d’une manière plus efficace et culturellement adaptée. Des entrevues avec un groupe de base et des informateurs clefs ont servi à se renseigner sur les besoins de la communauté rom, tels que perçus par leurs membres et par les fournisseurs de service des divers secteurs. Le processus d’évaluation de ces besoins a mis en lumière la contextualisation de l’identité rom telle qu’elle a été formée par des facteurs historiques, sociaux, culturels et conjoncturels. Une identité contextuellement riche offre une information plus précise, permet de mieux comprendre les expériences de marginalisation et d’oppression et met en question les stéréotypes et préjugés existants. Ce savoir est critique pour servir le développement de politiques et de programmes qui aillent mieux au devant des besoins de ceux qui sont le plus désavantagés par les inéquités sociales. We have been erroneously defined by outsiders —now we must correctly define ourselves. Ronald Lee Roma Community Centre, Toronto

Poverty and the Determinants of Welfare for Roma and Other Vulnerable Groups in Southeastern Europe

This article analyses different poverty patterns and coping strategies between Roma and other vulnerable groups that live in households with less than 4.3$PPP equivalent expenditures a day. The findings are based on a new survey, completed in 2004 in Southeast Europe, of Roma, refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and the majority living in close proximity to the Roma. The data reveal that poor households are behind non-poor households in terms of educational achievement, employment opportunities, access to secure housing, outstanding payments and access to health care. But the differences between poor and non-poor within the Roma sample is often less substantial than within the other two vulnerable groups. A multivariate analysis of poverty demonstrates that besides socio-economic determinants of welfare, the Roma identity significantly influences welfare levels in