The politics of evangelism: Masculinity and religious conversion among Gitanos

In/dividuality and charisma among Pentecostal Gypsies

“…Cantón-Delgado et al (2004) have seen how kinship ties can take precedence over religious affiliations among Gitanos and, for their part, Gay y Blasco (2000: 12) point out that conversions have to some extent undermined loyalty to families, in relation to non-converted Gypsies. It is clear that religious affiliation has extended the social relationships of the Roma beyond kinship ties, to a greater degree in the case of religious leaders, although the strength they have in the lives of the evangelical Roma depends to a large extent of the participation of relatives in the cults.…”

“…In the expansion of the religious organization, the transfer of traditional authority from the ‘old Gitanos of respect’ ( gitanos viejos de respeto ) to the religious leaders has been fundamental (Cantón-Delgado, 2017; Gay y Blasco, 2000). The policy of opening congregations carried out by the ECP throughout Spain was based on the permission of the elders with greater authority in the different territories, without which the religious leaders refrained from beginning their preaching.…”

Habitus ferviente en el Polígono Espronceda de Sabadell. Cómo el culto pentecostal rearticula la etnicidad y aumenta la autonomía personal y colectiva entre los gitanos

“…En este sentido, se puede afirmar que ser miembro de la IF significa que se es el señor de su propio destino. El avivamiento del pueblo gitano a través del pentecostalismo significa también tomar las riendas de su propio destino o al menos, el sentimiento de control de la propia existencia individual (Williams, 1991;Gay y Blasco, 2000).…”

Roma Ethnographies of Grief in the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…In an unprecedented way, the crisis exposed the existing precariousness of the Roma everyday and highlighted the disparities existing in their lives, households, relationships, losses, hopes and potentialities. The crisis also revealed the fragility and the strength of Roma kin-based, mutual, communal and social structures to counteract the inadequacy, belatedness and confusion of state responses (Korunovska and Jovanovic, 2020;Sarafian, 2022b;Gay y Blasco and Fotta, 2023). Just as the pandemic took place unexpectedly it also affected abruptly the research methods used to capture the complexity of lived experiences.…”