Ernő Kállai, Gábor Várkonyi - The Gypsies/The Roma in Hungarian society

Ernő Kállai, Gábor Várkonyi - The Gypsies/The Roma in Hungarian society
Publisher: Teleki László Foundation | 2002 | ISBN: 9638577460 | File type: PDF | 177 pages | 5.65 mb

Despite increased research about the Roma, there still remain several blind spots, since the majority of studies to date have addressed only the questions of poverty, social backwardness and segregation on the one hand, and that of culture and, more recently, Roma politics on the other. The obvious reason for this is that research into the Roma has been motivated by the exploration of social problems and the search for exotic cultural phenomena. This is closely related to the stereotypical manner of thought which has always attributed various extremities to the Roma ethnic group. Thus, the image of the Roma as a people with faraway origins, who are not European and possess an alien culture, live in great poverty or squander money irresponsibly, have no scruples, are extremely emotional, have many children, are uneducated and unable to hold a job suggests that extremity is an ethnic characteristic of the Roma. This is why we often (many times with the best of intentions) present the Roma as an unemployed and severely backward group of the population which relies on social benefits, forgetting to speak about the social stratification of this group or the strategies they have developed to survive the situation of unemployment.
One of the significant aspects of this book is that it shows that the vast majority of Roma, including those who are unemployed, do not just idly wait for social aid, but try to do everything in their power to get jobs and independently
secure their livelihood. Another important message of the book is that it does not highlight segregation but, on the contrary, focuses on the social integration of the Roma, depicting the everyday interdependency of the social minority and majority. It is worth noting that there is nothing special about the survival strategy of the Roma; the course they take is actually very similar to that taken by members of the social majority. Their lives are not driven by isolation and inactivity, but rather by the struggle to adapt to fast changing and often confusing social opportunities.


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