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Negotiating Roma Identity in Contemporary Urban Romania: an Ethnographic Study

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Negotiating Roma Identity in Contemporary Urban Romania: an Ethnographic Study NEGOTIATING ROMA IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY URBAN ROMANIA: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY Anca N. Birzescu A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 2013 Committee: Radhika Gajjala, Advisor Karen M. Kakas Graduate Faculty Representative Lara Martin Lengel Lynda Dixon © 2013 Anca Birzescu All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Radhika Gajjala, Advisor This dissertation is a critical ethnography of the Roma ethnic minority in post- communist Romania within the socio-economic and political context of the country’s post-accession to the European Union. The focus broadly is on the identity negotiation of the Roma minority in Romanian urban space. To this end, I explore Roma communicative practices in capital city of Bucharest. I examine the urban intercultural contact zones that represent Roma-non Roma relations and interactions. I draw on the productive “travelling” postcolonial theories and translate them into an examination of the Roma minority in Romanian physical space. My ethnography is informed by postcolonial theoretical frameworks that challenge the seemingly dichotomous colonizer/colonized relation. I look at discursive practices among Roma individuals suggesting alternative epistemes to allow for a nuanced understanding of the Roma-non Roma encounter. My methods include in-depth interviews, participant observation, and direct observation. The personal narratives of the 35 participants involved in this study emphasize a range of identity negotiation patterns. These reveal in turn complex, interrelated configurations of internalized oppression, passing, and hybridity that make possible both resistance and conformity to the dominant cultural production of the Gypsy Other. This research is an attempt to produce a constructive impact on policy and practice and therefore addresses the urgent need for critical, responsible inquiry that explores the diversity of Romani experience. iv For Lia, whose unconditional love and prayers are always companions during my Journey. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the members of my dissertation committee – Dr. Radhika Gajjala, Dr. Lara Martin Lengel, and Dr. Lynda Dixon– for their guidance, advice, and support since the moment I embarked on this project, as well as throughout the whole journey as a doctoral student at BGSU. I would like to show appreciation to my advisor and committee chair, Dr. Radhika Gajjala, for her invaluable mentorship and critical discussions that added to my development as a scholar and teacher, for her patience, thoughtful criticism, and cheering words. I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Lara Martin Lengel, my first advisor when I started the doctoral program, for her constructive feedback, friendly guidance, encouragement, time, and attention. I would like to show gratitude to Dr. Lynda Dixon for her contribution to my intellectual growth during my years of study in the program. I would like to thank Dr. Karen Kakas for her service as a Graduate Faculty Representative, and thus for her valuable input during the dissertation defense. I am also grateful to Dr. Smeeta Mishra for her thought-provoking feedback and guidance in the beginning of this project. I would like to thank my family for their support during my graduate education. I would also like to show gratitude to the generous, supportive, and inspiring people, colleagues and friends, I have met since beginning my doctoral work: Phyllis, Candice, Burgi, Franklin, Sue-Ellen, Codruta, Iuliana, Ioana, and Lorena. Last but not least, I would like to thank the Roma people I met in Bucharest and without whom this study would not have been possible. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER I. LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................... 6 Re-Presenting the Roma ............................................................................................ 6 In Search for Answers ............................................................................................... 9 From Online Ethnography to Offline Engagement with Roma Identity .................... 13 The Roma in Central Eastern Europe ........................................................................ 18 Roma Identity Politics in an Enlarged European Union ............................................ 24 A Postcolonial Theoretical Lens ................................................................................ 27 CHAPTER II. METHODOLOGY ........................................................................................ 38 Decoding the Ethnographic Outlook ......................................................................... 38 The Setting ............................................................................................................ 41 My Quest for Participants .......................................................................................... 43 Decoding the Interviewing Process ........................................................................... 45 CHAPTER III. ROMA DIASPORA: COMPETING PARADIGMS .................................. 48 Taking Ethnography from Cyberscapes into Romanian Urbanscapes ...................... 48 Producing Roma Diaspora ......................................................................................... 49 CHAPTER IV. FIELDWORK ANALYSIS ......................................................................... 65 Power Geometry Disrupted? Flower Sellers and the Negotiation of the City Center Space................................................................................................. 65 A Newly Found Sense of Pride: Roma Activists and the Production of Empowered Ethnic Identity ........................................................................................................... 74 vii Negotiating Roma Identity Everyday: Narratives of Internalized Oppression, Passing, and Hybridity ........................................................................................................... 80 CHAPTER V. CONCLUSIONS .......................................................................................... 90 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................ 95 APPENDIX A. CONSENT FORM ...................................................................................... 103 APPENDIX B. FIELDWORK INSTRUMENTS................................................................. 105 1 Negotiating Roma Identity in Contemporary Urban Romania: An Ethnographic Study INTRODUCTION Throughout my teenage years in Bucharest, I remember how each time I would see Gypsies1 on the buses, metro or trams I got on, in the shops I entered, at the secondary school I attended, at the farmer’s market, at our parish’s church, or simply on the streets I walked on, I would look at them differently than I would look at any other Romanian passers-by. I would look at them by either automatically activating a sort of defensive perception mechanism or simply by ignoring their presence in the landscape, sometimes three or four feet near me. However, I subsequently realized that the ignoring mechanism was just another “self-protective” device that would reassure against any possible interaction with them in the first place. I was not fully aware of, and better said, at that time I had no urgent need to ask myself how I had acquired such ways of seeing, of looking at, Gypsies. Looking back critically, I became aware that these mechanisms of interacting with Roma2 were an outcome of the Roma identity representations delineated by the discursive practices among mainstream Romanian population groups and by Romanian social institutions. My research endeavor is an attempt to unlearn these privileged ways of seeing the Roma and, above all, a humble attempt of reverse mirroring, of seeing myself through their ways of seeing me, of perceiving our interactions through their ways of negotiating Roma versus non-Roma relationships and interactions. 1The term “Roma” is generally preferred by Roma activists as ethnic identity designation in opposition to “Gypsy,” which is the generally pejorative or exoticizing label used by the dominant outgroup populations (Vermeersch, 2003). 2 There are two different spellings of the term “Roma,” namely “Roma” and “Rroma” (with two r’s); for the sake of consistency, I will use the former throughout the study. 2 The ambitious prospect of the European Union enlargement became a significant part of the whirling global transformation of our world, where individuals are increasingly facing the encounter of numerous cultural differences. As such, cultural, national, ethnic, religious identities are not any longer static entities but complex, protean discursive constructs, continuously open to reconstruction, renegotiation, and even contestation. In 1994, the well-known anti-communist dissident, public intellectual and former president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel (1995), eloquently traced the political tasks and prospects lying before a world that had witnessed major historical events in the second half of the twentieth century, most notably the collapse of the colonial hegemony and of communism: In today’s multicultural world, the truly reliable path to coexistence, to peaceful coexistence and creative cooperation,
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