A State of Despair: Roma (Gypsy) Population During Transition - Transylvanian Case Studies -
A State of Despair: Roma (Gypsy) Population During Transition - Transylvanian Case Studies -

Summary/Abstract: This paper tries to assess the present living conditions of a minority that is generally perceived as being to a greater extent “different” to the rest of the population, be that to life-styles, culture or economic strategies. While a general picture of this population is also intended, the paper’s main focus is on poverty and poverty reproduction among some of the rural Roma (Gypsy) people. More precisely, it tries to find what relations could be uncovered between the poverty of a minority group and a certain construction of ethnicity. I assumed that in order to trace this connection a microscopic and detailed research of all the aspects of life of a community is needed. I done such a research between 1999 and 2001 in the village Nusfalău (Sălaj), where I could track the history of two Roma communities from 1850 up to the present. The results of this research, which I’m presenting in this paper, put in comparison a very poor Roma community, whose daily life is pictured in great details, with a rich one, trying to explain how variables like history, mobility, degree of assimilation and traditional work patterns - in connection with different constructions of ethnicity - determine or prevent the state of poverty. One of the most unexpected and puzzling finding of the research is that the more assimilated a rural Roma community is, the greater are the chances to remain poor or even to become extremely poor during transition, and the less assimilated or “traditional” a community stay, the greater are the chances to cope or to enrich during transition.

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