INTERMEDIATE TRADE, MIGRATION, AND THE POLITICS OF ETHNICITY. ECONOMIC STRATEGIES AMONG ROMANIAN GABOR ROMA
INTERMEDIATE TRADE, MIGRATION, AND THE POLITICS OF ETHNICITY. ECONOMIC STRATEGIES AMONG ROMANIAN GABOR ROMA

Summary/Abstract: The study summarises the author’s field experience regarding the most widespread livelihood strategies among the Romanian Gabor Roma. Through a series of examples, it demonstrates how Gabor traders adapt – most of them successfully – to the new economic and social challenges that have emerged in the post-socialist transformation. The study also outlines and analyses how the politics of ethnicity is employed in their livelihood strategies. It aims to make the economic practices through which the Gabors earn their living more “visible” (thereby demystifying the process of “production”) and to counterbalance and complement the dominance of “consumption” which characterised the author’s earlier studies concerning the prestige economy of the Gabor Roma. Furthermore, the study may help to deconstruct negative ethnic stereotypes regarding the work ethic of the Roma, such as “Roma are lazy”, and, as a result, it may contribute to the destigmatisation of Roma in everyday – media and other – discourses.

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