Increasing Access to Higher Education and the Reproduction of Social Inequalities: The Case of Roma University Students in Eastern and Southeastern Europe

Garaz, Stela; Torotcoi, Simona

doi:10.1080/10564934.2017.1280334

Cited by 15 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…While there is no doubt that higher education expansion can increase social mobility by providing access to formerly excluded groups such as the Roma in Hungary, much research indicates how inequalities are preserved within and besides an expanding tertiary education in the case of Roma graduates in Eastern and Southern Europe where most of the Roma population are concentrated (Garaz-Torotcoi 2017). One indicator of the well documented historical educational gap between Roma and majority students is the discrepancy between the ratio of tertiary graduates among majority and Roma students.…”

Section: The History Of Educational Support Programs For Disadvantaged Studentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accumulating Roma cultural capital: First-in-family graduates and the role of educational talent support programs in Hungary in mitigating the price of social mobility

Julianna¹,

Bogdán²,

Durst³

2021

Szociológiai szemle

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Based on 165 in-depth, narrative life story interviews with first generation graduates, fieldwork with educational support initiatives and auto-ethnography, this article contributes to the literature on whether and how structural educational inequality can be compensated by talent support programs and whether and how these programs can mitigate the price of education-driven upward social mobility for those Roma and nonRoma Hungarians who come from socio-economically disadvantaged families. Upwardly mobile Roma who achieve social ascension through academic high achievement usually travel vast social distances that straddle class and ethnic context. Many of their mobility trajectories are accompanied by a set of challenges that are unique to college educated, racialized, underrepresented minorities. To overcome these challenges, and to compensate for the inequality of life chances that originate from their socially and economically disadvantaged family backgrounds and from an unequal and highly selective educational system, upwardly mobile minority students join educational support initiatives or organisations. This paper, drawing on the narratives of our research participants, argues that particular types of these initiatives or charitable foundations that deploy an ethnically targeted complex approach, can equip their beneficiaries with different types of capital. Amongst these, one of the most important is the Roma cultural capital. The newly gained capitals are necessary for the first-in-family Roma mentees to get through higher education and succeed in the labour market in the context of the specific challenges they face. These initiatives mitigate the price of social ascension the most. The paper uses a case study of Romaversitas to demonstrate its main findings.

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Section: The History Of Educational Support Programs For Disadvantaged Studentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accumulating Roma cultural capital: First-in-family graduates and the role of educational talent support programs in Hungary in mitigating the price of social mobility

Julianna¹,

Bogdán²,

Durst³

2021

Szociológiai szemle

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“…This low participation has not considerably changed despite the commitment of the Decade of Roma Inclusion (2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015) and the European Framework for national Roma strategies until 2020 to improve educational opportunities for Roma, partly by affirmative programs and by establishing pro-Roma ethnic organisations, and the Roma Education Fund (Brüggemann 2014). As a recent study by Garaz and Torotcoi (2017) reveals, it is not only that Roma in this region are underrepresented in colleges and universities, but also that they do so in the STEM fields of study (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). At the same time, Roma are overrepresented in humanities and art.…”

Section: Roma Educational Mobility and Its Outcome: Assimilation Or Selective Acculturation?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“I Felt I Arrived Home”: The Minority Trajectory of Mobility for First-in-Family Hungarian Roma Graduates

Durst

Bereményi²

2021

Social and Economic Vulnerability of Roma People

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This chapter explores the upward social mobility trajectories, and the corollary prices of them for those 45, first-in-family college educated Roma in Hungary who come from socially disadvantaged and marginalised family and community background. We argue that among the academically high-achieving participants of our study the most common upward mobility trajectory, contrary to the common belief of assimilation, is their distinctive minority mobility path which leads to their selective acculturation into the majority society. This distinctive incorporation into the mainstream is close to what the related academic scholarship calls the ‘minority culture of mobility’. The three main elements of this distinct mobility trajectory among the Roma are (1) The construction of a Roma middle class identity that takes belonging to the Roma community as a source of pride, in contrast of the widespread racial stereotypes in Hungary (and all over Europe) that are closely tied to the perception of Roma as a member of the underclass, (2) The creation of grass-roots ethnic (Roma) organizations and (3) The practice of giving back to their people of origin that relegate many Roma professionals to a particular segment of the labour market, in jobs to help communities in need. However, we argue that in the case of the Hungarian Roma, these elements of the minority culture of mobility did not serve the purpose of their economic mobility as the original concepts (Neckerman et al. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22(6):945–965, 1999) posits, but to mitigate the price of changing social class and to make sense of the hardship of their social ascension.

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“…The FSG has estimated their number in between 2 and 3% of the total Roma population (FSG 2013, 2019) but there is no way to calculate the margin of error of that estimate. The studies are also quite scant at the European level (Kende 2007;Pantea 2015;Garaz and Torotcoi 2017;Gkofa 2018) and non existent in the Americas. -There is not a single study on Roma professionals: quantitative figures, ethnographic studies, nothing.…”

Section: Emerging Approaches and Research Gaps In Roma Education Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Roma Population in the Spanish Education System: Identifying Explanatory Frameworks and Research Gaps

Rosa

García-Andreu

2021

Social and Economic Vulnerability of Roma People

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This chapter makes a literature review based on the Grant and Booth qualitative systematic methodology of the studies about the educational situation of the Roma in Spain, with an wider, extended scope that allows to compare the findings with those conducted on other countries’ Roma populations. Studies on the Roma educational situation in Spain are hindered by the lack of official, periodical statistics, having to rely on sample-based surveys and ethnographic studies. In spite of the inaccuracy of the studies all of them show, as a general picture, a staggering educational gap between the Roma and the rest of society which is common to all Western countries. Most of the studies on Roma education have concentrated in this negative aspect. Numerous theoretical frameworks have been developed to explain this staggering education gap. All them acknowledge the phenomenon as a multidimensional one but for heuristic purposes they can be ordered along an endogenous/exogenous factors continuum depending on how much they stress the weight of factors stemming from characteristics of the Roma ethnic group itself or, on the contrary, of the majority non-Roma society. The literature review has also identified an emergent critical current that sees this studies focused on educational underachievement as a sharing a common essentialist bias that helps to reinforce the stigmatization of Roma and have turned to focus, instead, on the study of academic success among the Roma. Although this emerging field is very promising, our review has identify several significant research gaps in this regard: a lack of longitudinal studies, a lack of studies on the Roma upper and middle classes and a lack of studies on Roma students in post-compulsory education, particularly the university level. This article encourages researchers to fill this gaps with the conviction that the knowledge obtained can help combat the negative stereotypes and the self-fulfilling prophecy effect that approaches focused on Roma underachievement may have.

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Increasing Access to Higher Education and the Reproduction of Social Inequalities: The Case of Roma University Students in Eastern and Southeastern Europe

Cited by 15 publications

References 21 publications

Accumulating Roma cultural capital: First-in-family graduates and the role of educational talent support programs in Hungary in mitigating the price of social mobility

Accumulating Roma cultural capital: First-in-family graduates and the role of educational talent support programs in Hungary in mitigating the price of social mobility

“I Felt I Arrived Home”: The Minority Trajectory of Mobility for First-in-Family Hungarian Roma Graduates

Roma Population in the Spanish Education System: Identifying Explanatory Frameworks and Research Gaps

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