Rethinking Roma

Abstract

There is no systematic coverage of the racialisation of the planet. This series is the first attempt to present a comprehensive mapping of global racisms, providing a way in which to understand global racialisation and acknowledge the multiple generations of different racial logics across regimes and regions. Unique in its intellectual agenda and innovative in producing a new empirically-based theoretical framework for understanding this glocalised phenomenon, Mapping Global Racisms considers racism in many underexplored regions such as Russia, Arab racisms in North African and Middle Eastern contexts, and racism in Pacific contries such as Japan, Hawaii, Fiji and Samoa.More information about this series at

Skilling marginalised or skills eco‐system, precarious workers and higher education—A case study of Roma in Liverpool, UK

“…This case study illustrates how challenging it is for individuals such as Roma at the fringes of a society (one that espouses a social democratic relationship between capital and labour) to develop the necessary skills, mainly due to the deregulation of waged work, persecution, discrimination, casualisation of labour, and the increased use of precarious (such as zero‐hour contracts) paid work. At the same time, there is evidence of Roma's resistance and challenge to unfair labour practices (Collins et al, 2021) and reframing of Roma's identity and experience from within the community, manifest in Roma influence on decision‐making and policy (Law & Kovats, 2018). These characteristics of the UK labour market, increasingly common, act as a roadblock to acquiring sustainable decent work.…”

Romani Communities and Transformative Change

“…While the debate in recent decades on Romani inclusion has centred on human rights, critics argue that a neoliberal human rights agenda only allows for tokenistic concessions, leaving the fundamental nature of society unchanged Law and Kovats, 2018). This view certainly has validity as the Roma have experienced little material improvement in their situation, despite being protected by human rights norms (even stronger within the EU), and targeted by initiatives by human rights agencies and NGOs.…”

“…Critics of the strategies of the contemporary Romani movement contend that an emphasis on narrow identity politics has meant liberal reformist and cultural aims have taken precedence over structural change (Law and Kovats, 2018). This reflects the tension recognized between redistribution and recognition, where demands for 'recognition of difference' have fuelled struggles of groups mobilized under the banners of nationality, ethnicity, 'race', gender and sexuality.…”

“…This cultural war has a demographic dimension as well, where older, less educated and rural sections of the population are pitted against the young, diverse and metropolitan. For some, the answer to these tensions rests in colour-blind policies centred on universal conceptions of citizenship (Kovats and Law, 2018). For others, targeting and ethnic-based policies offer tailored policy responses and platforms for community voices (Cortés, 2019).…”

Knowing “the Roma”: Visual technologies of sorting populations and the policing of mobility in Europe

“…Census categories and social worlds co-construct each other: “In the hands of a central authority, the category is an objectifying technique of configuring social relations and when all categories are assembled (gender, origin, occupation, income, and so on) the population comes into being” (Ruppert, 2012: 38). This is not to suggest that Roma ethnicity or identity is merely or primarily a bureaucratic invention and the result of often highly politicized expert practices of classification (see also Law and Kovats, 2018; Surdu and Kovats, 2015). The history of the diverse people who identify (or are identified) as Roma is more complex and heterogeneous, relying both on more or less violent state or nonstate practices of intervention, categorization, and monitoring, and on the interrelated, active articulation of a Roma identity by people who consider themselves for various reasons part of a larger Roma community or diaspora (Van Baar, 2011a).…”