The forest behind the bar charts: Bridging quantitative and qualitative research on Roma/Ţigani in contemporary Romania

Patterns of Prejudice

Volumn 44, Issue 4, 2010, Pages 337-367

  Rughiniş, Cosima ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST   (Romania)

Author keywords

Ethnicity; Ethnonyms; Prejudice; Romania; Sampling; Stereotypes; Surveys roma; igani

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CULTURAL FACTOR; EASTERN EUROPE; ECONOMICS; EDUCATION; ETHNIC GROUP; ETHNOLOGY; GIPSY; HISTORY; HUMAN; LEGAL ASPECT; POPULATION RESEARCH; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; RESEARCH; ROMANIA; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL CONTROL; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; SOCIOECONOMICS;

CENSUSES; CULTURAL CHARACTERISTICS; ETHNIC GROUPS; EUROPE, EASTERN; GYPSIES; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 21ST CENTURY; HUMANS; PREJUDICE; RESEARCH; ROMANIA; SOCIAL CONTROL POLICIES; SOCIAL IDENTIFICATION; SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS; STEREOTYPING;

EID: 77956726330     PISSN: 0031322X     EISSN: 14617331     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/0031322X.2010.510716     Document Type: Article

References (119)

1. Dena Ringold, Mitchell A. Orenstein and Erika Wilkens, Roma in an Expanding Europe: Breaking the Poverty Cycle (Washington, D. C.: The World Bank 2005), available on the World Bank website at http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTROMA/Resources/roma_in_expanding_europe.pdf (viewed 26 May 2010).
2. Achim estimates that around 25,000 Roma were deported to Transnistria and around half of them died there
3. Viorel Achim, Ţiganii în istoria Romaniei (Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedicǎ 1998).
4. Mǎlina Voicu, 'Tolerance and perceived discrimination', in Gabriel Bǎdescu, Vlad Grigoraş, Cosima Rughiniş, Mǎlina Voicu and Ovidiu Voicu, Roma Inclusion Barometer (Bucharest: Open Society Foundation 2007), 56, available on the Soros Foundation Romania website at www.osf.ro/en/publicatii.php?cat=16 (viewed 26 May 2010).
5. See, for example, Gábor Fleck and Cosima Rughiniş (eds), Come Closer: Inclusion and Exclusion of Roma in Present-day Romanian Society (Bucharest: Human Dynamics 2008).
6. Cǎtǎlin Zamfir and Elena Zamfir (eds), Ţiganii: Între ignorare şi îngrijorare (Bucharest: Alternative 1993).
7. János Ladányi and Iván Szelényi, 'The social construction of Roma ethnicity in Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary during market transition', Review of Sociology, vol. 7, no. 2, 2001, 71-89.
8. UNDP, Avoiding the Dependency Trap: The Roma in Central and Eastern Europe (Bratislava: UNDP 2002), available on the UNDP website at http://roma.undp.sk (viewed 26 May 2010).
9. Ladányi and Szelényi, 'The social construction of Roma ethnicity in Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary during market transition'.
10. I have worked in the research teams for the Public Opinion Barometers, the Roma Inclusion Barometer 2006, the Inclusion 2007 survey and the Work Attitudes 2008 survey. Therefore, I have more familiarity with these databases. For the others, this article was an opportunity to use them in greater depth for the first time.
11. The data set is available on the IPUMSI website at https://international.ipums.org/international (viewed 9 June 2010).
12. The data sets are available on the EDRC website at www.edrc.ro/resources.jsp (viewed 9 June 2010).
13. For the data seţ see UNDP, Avoiding the Dependency Trap.
14. The data sets are available on the Soros Foundation Romania website at www.osf.ro (viewed 9 June 2010).
15. The data set has been made available courtesy of the survey co-ordinator Sorin Cace.
16. Although INSSE is a publicly funded institution, the Family Budget Survey micro-data are not public, and I could not access the database. Therefore, I rely on the analyses available in Ringold, Orenstein and Wilkens, Roma in an Expanding Europe and its background materials.
17. The data set is available from the Soros Foundation Romania.
18. Initial results of thesurveywerepublished in Fleck and Rughiniş (eds),Come Closer, 202-14
19. the second phase was conducted by the Institute for the Study of National Minority Problems (ISPMN, Institutul pentru Studierea Problemelor Minoritǎţilor Naţionale), and details are available on the ISPMN website at http://ispmn.gov.ro/ancheta-sociologica-proiect-phare-2004-intarirea-capacitatii-si-construirea-de-parteneriate-pentru-a-imbunatati-situatia-romilor-si-perceptia-lor-publica (viewed 15 June 2010).
20. The data set is available from the Soros Foundation Romania. COSIMA RUGHINIS.
21. Zamfir and Zamfir (eds), Ţiganii, 60.
22. Dumitru Sandu, Comunitǎţile de romi din România: O hartǎ a sǎrǎciei comunitare prin sondajul PROROMI (Bucharest: World Bank 2005), available online at www.anr.gov.ro/docs/statistici/PROROMI--Comunitatile-de-Romi-din-Romania-187.pdf (viewed 9 June 2010).
23. Labelled as 'Gypsy' in the IPUMSI database.
24. Council of Europe, 'Roma and Travellers glossary', 11 December 2006, available on the Council of Europe website at www.coe.int/t/dg3/romatravellers/Source/documents/GlossaryRoma.doc (viewed 10 June 2010).
25. See, for example, Shannon Woodcock, 'Romania and Europe: Roma, Rroma and Ţigani as sites for the contestation of ethno-national identities', Patterns of Prejudice, vol. 41, no. 5, 2007, 493-515.
26. Most recently in a campaign initiated by Gabriela Antoniu's article 'Propunere Jurnalul National: "Ţigan" în loc de "rom"', Jurnalul National, 17 March 2009.
27. According to Delia Grigore, in the Romani language the 'Rrom' spelling is used to mark the distinctive nasal pronunciation of the initial 'r'; since the pronunciation in the Romanian language is not nasal, 'Rom' should be the correct spelling (Delia Grigore, 'De ce rrom şi nu ţigan', Cotidianul, 10 November 2007).
28. I have consulted the dictionaries in the versions available online in the virtual library Dex Online (http://dexonline.ro, viewed 10 June 2010). The following dictionaries listed the terms 'Rom' and/or 'Rrom': Academia Românǎ, Institutul de Lingvisticǎ 'Iorgu Iordan'
29. Dicţionarul explicativ al limbii române (Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic 1998)
30. Mircea and Luiza Seche, Dicţionar de sinonime (Bucharest: Editura Litera Internaţional 2002)
31. Dicţionar ortografic al limbii române (Bucharest: Editura Litera Internaţional 2002)
32. Noul dicţionar explicativ al limbii române (Bucharest: Editura Litera Internaţional 2002)
33. Academia Românǎ, Institutul de Lingvisticǎ 'Iorgu Iordan-/Al. Rosetti', Dicţionar ortografic, ortoepic şi morfologic al limbii române (Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic 2005).
34. Margaret Beissinger, 'Occupation and ethnicity: constructing identity among professional Romani (Gypsy) musicians in Romania', Slavic Review, vol. 60, no. 1, 2001, 24-49.
35. Delia Grigore, Curs de antropologie şi folclor rrom (Bucharest: Editura Credis 2001), 51-62, available on the Romanian Ministry of Education website at http://administraresite.edu.ro/index.php/articles/c426 (viewed 10 June 2010).
36. Ibid., 5, 53, 60.
37. See Beissinger, 'Occupation and ethnicity'; Dénes Kiss, 'Romii din Herculianşi rolul religiei penticostaleîn viaţa lor comunitarǎ', in Támas Kiss, László Fosztó and Gábor Fleck (eds), Incluziune şi excluziune: Studii de caz asupra comunitǎţilor de romi din România (Cluj-Napoca: Editura Institutului pentru Studierea Problemelor Minoritǎţilor Naţionale/Editura Kriterion 2009)
38. László Fosztó Colecţie de studii despre romii din România (Cluj-Napoca: Editura Institutului pentru Studierea Problemelor Minoritǎţilor Naţionale/Editura Kriterion 2009)
39. Raluca Paşca, 'Spécificité du terrain tsigane: notes d'enquêtes auprès des Chaudronniers de Sǎruleşti', SACR Annual Review (Yearbook of the Romanian Society of Cultural Anthropology) (Bucharest: Paideia 1999), 90-100
40. Cosima Rughiniş, 'Comment s'organise pour un meilleur environnement dans un quartier d'exclus à Bucarest?', in François Hainard and Christine Verschuur (eds), Femmes dans les crises urbaines: relations de genre et environnements précaire (Paris: Karthala 2001), 231-70
41. Monica Şerban, 'Aspecte ale ataşamentului faţǎ de comunitatea localǎ: Studiu comparativ asupra a douǎ comunitǎţi de rromi cǎldǎrari bogaţi', Revista de Cercetǎ ri Sociale, no. 3-4, 1998.151-79
42. Alina Silian, 'Elemente pentru o regândire a incluziunii sociale-Comunitatea romilor din Veseuş-Jidvei', in Kiss Fosztó and Fleck (eds), Incluziuneşi excluziune
43. Gabriel Troc 'A state of despair: Roma (Gypsy) population during transition', Studia Europaea, vol. 47, no. 1-2, 2002, 49-90
44. Mǎlina Voicu (ed.), Nevoi şi resurse în comunitǎţile de romi (Bucharest: Fundaţia Soros Romania 2007)
45. Mǎlina Voicu and Claudiu D. Tufiş (eds), Romii: Poveşti de viaţǎ (Bucharest: Fundaţia Soros România 2008)
46. and Cerasela Voiculescu, 'Construcţii identitare la rromii din Sângerogiu de Mureş', Sociologie Româneascǎ, no. 1-2, 2002, 100-25.
47. Zamfir and Zamfir (eds), Ţiganii, 243.
48. Statistically significant for Chi Square Texţ p-0.01.
49. Only self-identified Romani respondents in the Roma sample are included in the analysis. Of the 618 respondents in the Roma sample, 401 self-declared as Roma, 54 self-declared as another ethnic identity and, for 163 respondentştheir affiliation was unknown.
50. Fredrik Barth, 'Introduction', in Fredrick Barth (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (Boston: Little Brown 1969).
51. Ibid., 10-15.
52. See, particularly, Andreas Wimmer, 'The making and unmaking of ethnic boundaries: a multilevel process theory', American Journal of Sociology, vol. 113, no. 4, 2008, 970-1022
53. Roger Ballard, 'Race, ethnicity and culture', in Martin Holborn (ed.), New Directions in Sociology (Ormskirk: Causeway 2002)
54. Loïc Wacquanţ 'Race as civil felony', International Social Science Journal, vol. 57, no. 183, 2005, 127-42
55. Michael Omi and Howard Winanţ 'Racial formations', in Paula S. Rothenberg (ed.), Race, ClasşGender in the United States 7th edn (New York: Worth Publishers 2007), 13-22
56. Rogers Brubaker, 'Ethnicity without groups', Archives Européenes de Sociologie/ European Journal of Sociology, vol. 43, no. 2, 2002, 163-89
57. Rogers Brubaker, Mara Loveman and Peter Stamatov, 'Ethnicity as cognition', Theory and Society, vol. 33, no. 1, 2004, 31-64
58. and Henry Hale, 'Explaining ethnicity', Comparative Political Studieşvol. 37, no. 4, 2004, 458-85.
59. Ballard, 'Race, ethnicity and culture'.
60. Brubaker, 'Ethnicity without groups', 167-8.
61. See, for example, the discussion in Paloma Gay y Blasco, '"We don't know our descent": how the Gitanos of Jarana manage the past', Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 7, no. 4, 2001, 631-47.
62. Iván Szelényi, 'Poverty under post-Communist capitalism: the effects of class andethnicity in a cross-national comparison', paper presented at the conference 'Unity and diversity', Brugeş 29-30 October 2001, 51, draft available on the Cordis website at ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/belgium/docs/szelenyi-paper.pdf (viewed 15 June 2010).
63. Patricia Ahmed, Cynthia Feliciano and Rebecca Jean Emigh, 'Internal and external ethnic assessments in Eastern Europe', California Center for Population Research, On-Line Working Paper Series, CCPR-055-06, December 2006, 3, available on the CCPR website at http://papers.ccpr.ucla.edu/papers/PWP-CCPR-2006-055/PWP-CCPR-2006-055.pdf (viewed 15 June 2010).
64. For the report on the meeting, see Project on Ethnic Relations (PER), Roma and Statistics. Strasbourg, France. May 22-23, 2000 (Princeton, NJ: PER 2000), available on the PER website at www.per-usa.org/reports/PERStrasbourg.pdf (viewed 15 June 2010).
65. Framework Convention for the Protection of Minorities1 February 1995, available on the Council of Europe website at http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/EN/Treaties/Html/157.htm (viewed 15 June 2010).
66. Explanatory Reporţ available on the Council of Europe website at http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/EN/Reports/Html/157.htm (viewed 15 June 2010).
67. Ferenc Babusik, 'Legitimacy, statistics and research methodology: who is Romani in Hungary today and what are we (not) allowed to know about Roma', Roma Rights Quarterly, no. 1, 2004, 14-18.
68. Ibid., 16.
69. See, for example, Cosmin Briciu, 'Cartierul Dodeni-Bicaz', in Voicu (ed.), Nevoi şi resurse în comunitǎţile de romi, 27
70. Vlad Grigoraş, 'Buhuşi-Mocirla', in Voicu (ed.), Nevoi şi resurse în comunitǎţile de romi, 51
71. Marian Preda, 'Conflictul din localitatea Mihail Kogǎlniceanu', in Zamfir and Zamfir (eds), Ţiganii, 178
72. Şerban, 'Aspecte ale ataşamentului faţǎ de comunitatea localǎ', 153
73. Voiculescu, 'Construcţii identitare la rromii din Sângerogiu de Mureş', 102
74. Levente Salat and Valér Veres 'Ethnic minorities and local public administration in Romania: cases of ethnocultural tension and segregation', paper presented at the 10th NISPAcee Annual Conference, 'Delivering public services in CEE countries: trends and developments', Cracow, 25-7 April 2002, available online at http://adatbank.transindex.ro/vendeg/htmlk/pdf4098.pdf (viewed 15 June 2010).
75. Unfortunately, since the UNDP survey was conducted in Romania in December 2001, respondents' answers refer to the Census in 1992 and not to the 2002 Censuşand therefore may be influenced by failures of memory. For information about the UNDP survey period, see UNDP, Avoiding the Dependency Trap, Annexes.
76. UNDP, Avoiding the Dependency Trap, 87.
77. The Hungarian sample is an exception because the Hungarian researchers decided to include only self-identified Romani respondents.
78. With a 95 per cent degree of confidence, the proportion is in the interval 1.55-1.71 per cent.
79. Cosima Rughiniş, 'Introduction', in Fleck and Rughiniş(eds), Come Closer, 11.
80. A proportion of 80.5 per cent of self-affiliated Roma in the UNDP survey said that they declared a Romani identity in the previous Census; 8.5 per cent declared Romanian ethnicity, 0.5 per cent other ethnicity, and the remaining 10.5 per cent said that they had declared no affiliation in the Census.
81. Babusik, 'Legitimacy, statistics and research methodology', 18.
82. Project on Ethnic RelationşRoma and Statistics 14; Ladányi and Szelényi, 'The social construction of Roma ethnicity in Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary during market transition', 82.
83. Ladányi and Szelényi, 'The social construction of Roma ethnicity in Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary during market transition', 81-2.
84. Ibid., 86-7.
85. Sandu, Comunitǎţile de romi din România.
86. Ladányi and Szelényi, 'The social construction of Roma ethnicity in Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary during market transition', 81-2
87. The Pro Romi survey presented in Sandu, Comunitǎţile de romi din România.
88. Inclusion 2007.
89. Eva Haviarová, 'Demographic and socioeconomic data on the Roma in Slovakia and their use by public administration', paper presented at the 12th NISPAcee Annual Conference
90. 'Central and Eastern European countries inside and outside the European Union: avoiding a new divide', Vilnius 13-/15 May 2004, available on the UN Public Administration Network website at http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/nispacee/unpan018442.pdf (viewed 15 June 2010).
91. As a field supervisor for the Inclusion 2007 local authority survey, I often received telephone calls from local authorities asking how should they report a given Romani community whose members declared other ethnic identities in the Census.
92. Such as in the Pro Romi 2005 survey and the Slovakia 2003-/4 survey mentioned above.
93. Sandu, Comunitǎţile de romi din România, 42.
94. Susanne Milcher and Andrey Ivanov, 'The United Nations Development Programme's vulnerability projects: Roma and ethnic data', Roma Rights Quarterly, no. 1, 2004, 7-13.
95. Sandu, Comunitǎţile de romi din România, 6.
96. Babusik, 'Legitimacy, statistics and research methodology', 17-18.
97. Zamfir and Zamfir (eds), Ţiganii; Cǎtǎlin Zamfir and Marian Preda (eds), Romii în România (Bucharest: Editura Expert 2002).
98. Bǎdescu et al., Roma Inclusion Barometer.
99. Fleck and Rughiniş(eds), Come Closer.
100. By 'settlement', I mean neighbourhoods or communities that have a commonly known name and that are distinguishable from other settlements in the local understanding, though not necessarily according to municipal or other administrative institutions.
101. See, for example, Mariana Goina, 'Între "ţiganii de mǎtase" şi cei ce "fierb în suc propriu": Studiu de caz al comunitǎţii de romi din Curtici, judeţul Arad', in Kiss Fosztó and Fleck (eds), Incluziune şi excluziune
102. Şerban, 'Aspecte ale ataşamentului faţǎ de comunitatea localǎ'
103. Voiculescu, 'Construcţii identitare la rromii din Sângerogiu de Mureş'
104. Stefánia Toma, '"Ţiganul meu" şi încrederea-relaţii economice informale într-o comunitate multietnicǎ din Transilvania', in Kiss Fosztó and Fleck (eds), Incluziune şi excluziune
105. and Gabriel Troc, 'A state of despair: Roma (Gypsy) population during transition'.
106. See, for example, György Csepeli and Dávid Simon, 'Construction of Roma identity in Eastern and Central Europe: perception and self-identification', Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies vol. 30, no. 1, 2004, 129-50 (134-5)
107. and Gábor Fleck, Ioana Florea and Cosima Rughiniş, 'Conclusions', in Fleck and Rughiniş(eds), Come Closer, 217.
108. Michael Stewarţ 'Approaches to Roma and Gypsies from within social anthropology with particular reference to the Anglo-Saxon traditions', paper presented at the conference
109. 'Az etnicitás empirikus kutatásának dilemmái', Research Institute of Ethnic and National MinoritieşHungarian Academy of Science, 11-12 June 2008, draft available on the Hungarian Academy of Science website at www.mtaki.hu/hirek/080611-12.html (viewed 16 June 2010).
110. Bǎdescu et al., Roma Inclusion Barometer, 5-6.
111. Dumitru Sandu, 'Schema de eşantionare pentru Barometrul Incluziunii Romilor, 2006 (BIR)', available on the author's website at http://dumitru.sandu.googlepages.com/SelectiaesantionuluideromiFSD06b.pdf (viewed 16 June 2010).
112. Dumitru Sandu, 'Communities in Roma sampling', slides for presentation at ISNMI conference
113. 'Methodological questions of Roma surveys', Cluj, 13 July 2008, available from a link on the author's webpage at http://dumitru.sandu.googlepages.com/didactice (viewed 16 June 2010).
114. Metro Media Transilvania, Barometrul Relaţ iilor Etnice (Cluj: EDRC 2001), 3, available on the EDRC website at www.edrc.ro/programe/Prezentare-BARE-2001.pdf (viewed 15 July 2010)
115. While this was a formal methodological framework, it would be an interesting topic in itself to see how it was put into practice by researchers. The relationship between official methodological procedures and researchers' field decisions may offer surprising insights into the construction of Roma samples in all kinds of surveys.
116. For the subsamples in POB and FBS, there is no information about community heterogeneity in the data set.
117. Zamfir and Zamfir (eds), Ţiganii, 97.
118. Of course, there are different codifications for questions on education. For all databases except ERBA 2001-2, I could recode educational achievement into four categories: 1 no schooling at all; 2 complete or incomplete primary school (grades 1 to 4); 3 complete or incomplete middle school, vocational or apprentice school, sometimes also including special schools (this category always has only a handful of cases and most often is missing); 4 complete or incomplete high school (grades 9-12) or any complete or incomplete higher education (college, university, postgraduate study etc.). The ERBA questionnaires asked for the last school graduated from, and therefore 'no schooling' is grouped together with graduates of the first 3 gradeşand the primary school graduates are grouped together with incomplete middle school graduates.
119. Post-stratification of all Roma samples on residence, gender and age categories (according to the structure of FBS 2005) leads to very similar results probably because educational achievement in Roma samples has a weak correlation with residence, gender and age.