No abstract

The article is based on a longterm field research in an Eastern Slovak Romani settlement and an English town, to which Roma migrated from the settlement. The paper attempts to disrupt a bipolar approach to the migration of Roma to England, and, at the same time, to point to the transnational interconnectedness of the Romani community and to the replication of inter-group boundaries patterns. Such a dynamic approach to migration allows the authors to consider a different phenomenon, namely religious conversion of Roma to Pentecostal churches. This leads to an observation of parallels in the narratives of conversion and migration, which are both based on a dichotomy of "new" and "old", and inclusion of the religious conversion phenomenon into the analysis of migration, alongside highlighting transnational social networks, acquiring secondary social bonds and strengthening local inter-group boundaries.

This article is based on long-term field research in an Eastern Slovak Romani settlement and an English town to which Roma migrated from the settlement. The paper attempts to disrupt the bipolar approach toward the migration of Roma to England and, at the same time, to point out the transnational interconnectedness of the Romani community and the replication of inter-group boundary patterns. This dynamic approach to migration allows the authors to also consider a different phenomenon, namely, the religious conversion of Roma to Pentecostal churches. This leads to an observation of parallels in the narratives of conversion and migration, which are both based on a dichotomy of “new” and “old”, and inclusion of the phenomenon of religious conversion in the analysis of migration alongside the highlighting of transnational social networks, the acquiring of secondary social bonds, and the strengthening of local inter-group boundaries.

No abstract

The article focuses on the local practice of the central policies of socialist Czechoslovakia that aimed to regulate the movement of the Roma, namely the legal efforts to settle nomadic persons and subsequently the plan of controlled resettlement of the Roma from eastern Slovakia to the Bohemian lands. Although migration was a shared experience of the inhabitants of a historically marginalized region of eastern Slovakia, the mobility of the Roma was securitized and understood in central policies as a qualitatively different movement of the “Gypsies.” Focusing primarily on life trajectories of the Roma that were all connected to the social space of a particular municipality in north-eastern Slovakia, the study examines the ways in which various aspects of their mobility affected negotiations of their ambivalent position in the local hierarchy of socioeconomic relations. Particularly, it shows that in spite of the realization of these restrictive policies, some Roma were able to maintain not only the continuity of migration as an independent economic strategy, but also the continuity of local belonging, even with the help of other non-Romani actors. This locally focused study contributes to a broader debate about the character of the Roma’s agency and their social position in Central and Eastern Europe (see e.g. Marushiakova and Popov 2021). On the one hand it strives to break up with the idea of homogeneity of the Roma experience vis-à-vis the socialist policies, and on the other it builds on the research into the relationship between local belonging and (self-)identification of the Roma.