“This Is How I Abandoned School and Began Selling Sunflower Seeds”. Work Experiences, Living Conditions, and Relations to Formal Education of Roma Families in a Romanian Town
“This Is How I Abandoned School and Began Selling Sunflower Seeds”. Work Experiences, Living Conditions, and Relations to Formal Education of Roma Families in a Romanian Town

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to apply accounts of cultural ecological theory (coined by John U. Ogbu and others) to a case study of a Roma family in Romania whose child is a low achiever in the local school and is at great risk of dropping out. As the following sections demonstrate, cultural ecological theory can highlight the epistemological and empirical strengths of the anthropological account by exploring school inequalities in the case of socially marginalised and ethno-racially stigmatized groups. Cultural ecological theory claims that individual values and practices referring to school and education are shaped by the broader social and cultural framework of a community and linked to different types of inequalities and disadvantages typical of this community. The mismatch between the local Roma family and the educational unit, presented in the final section, reflects how experiences with schooling, the labour market, and the forced removal of locals lead to a vicious circle and are responsible for transmitting educational inequalities from one generation to another.

• Details
• Contents