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Article Excerpt
Abstract
The increasing settlement in Hamilton, Ontario of large numbers of Roma families from seeking refugee status has challenged local service providers in the health, social services, education, immigration, and justice sectors. The overall aim of the Roma Project was to promote deeper understanding of Roma peoples and their culture in order to inform more effective and culturally appropriate service delivery. Focus group and key informant interviews were used to gather information about the perceived needs of the Roma community from the perspective of community members and service providers from diverse sectors. The needs assessment process highlighted the contextualization of Roma identity as shaped by historical, social, cultural, and situational factors. The development of a contextually-rich identity yields more precise information, provides insight into experiences of marginalization and oppression, and challenges existing stereotypes and biases. This knowledge is critical to inform the development of policies and programs to better meet the needs of those most disadvantaged by social inequities.
Resume
La hausse de l'implantation a Hamilton en Ontario d'un grand hombre de families rom originaires de Hongrie et demandant le statut de refugies a pose une gageure aux servives locaux dans les domaines de la sante des services sociaux, de l'education, de l'immigration et de la justice. Le Projet Rom visait en general a promouvoir une meilleure comprehension des peuples rom et de leur culture afin d'informer les intervenants des divers services d'une maniere plus efficace et culturellement adaptee. Des entrevues avec un groupe de base et des informateurs clefs ont servi a se renseigner sur les besoins de la communaute rom, tels que percus par leurs membres et par les fournisseurs de service des divers secteurs. Le processus d'evaluation de ces besoins a mis en lumiere la contextualisation de l'identite room telle qu'elle a ete formee par des facteurs historiques, sociaux, culturels et conjoncturels. Une identite contextuellement riche offre une information plus precise, permet de mieux comprendre les experiences de marginalisation et d'oppression et met en question les stereotypes et prejuges existants. Ce savoir est critique pour servir le developpement de politiques et de programmes qui aillent mieux au devant des besoins de ceux qui sont le plus desavantages par les inequites sociales.
We have been erroneously defined by outsiders--now we must correctly define ourselves.
Ronald Lee
Roma Community Centre, Toronto
Since 1999, there has been increasing settlement in Hamilton of large numbers of Roma families from Hungary, seeking refugee status. Local agencies were concerned about the Roma population's perceived difficulties with the child-protection and youth and criminal justice systems and the ability of these systems to provide effective services to the Roma community. For example, more than 300 Roma families had been referred to the Catholic Children's Aid Society (CCAS) of Hamilton-Wentworth for child-protection reasons. Funding for the Roma Project was secured through the Community Mobilization Programme, Crime Prevention Reduction Strategy. The overall aim of the Roma Project was to assess the needs of the Roma community from their own perspective and from the viewpoint of the community agencies providing services to them. The goals of the research project were to identify individuals who might be able to speak for the Roma community or who might be developed as leaders of the Roma community, and to identify agencies which are mandated to provide services to meet the diverse needs of the Roma community. With the assistance of those with a vested interest in serving the Roma community, the project intended to identify more effective approaches or means of providing services to the Roma community from the perspective of the community and relevant service providers and to identify and plan specific programs or services that might benefit Roma children, families, and their community. Since misconceptions surrounding Roma identity are thought to have a major impact on the effectiveness of service provision, this paper reviews the literature on historical and current factors that impact on Roma identity development. The effects of the construction of Roma identity are examined in light of service delivery.
ROMA IDENTITY
Although precise estimates are unknown, the Roma, numbering from seven to nine million, are Europe's largest minority (Brearley 2001). One of the issues in ascertaining a precise estimate of the population of Romani relates to identity construction. Some countries have only recently recognized Roma as an ethnic group for official purposes, while others have not. Roma people are reluctant to self-identify because of their history of oppression and forced assimilation and their distrust of authority.
According to Rummens (2000), identity construction is the process of developing personal and/or social identities for the self, either by individuals or groups. Roma identity is largely dependent on who is constructing identity. The Roma people of Hungary, for example, self-identify as a heterogeneous, sociocultural unit, and use the self-appellation of Roma to designate membership. Yet little empirical data is available to support this construction (Csepeli and Simon 2004). In contrast, the majority population of Hungary holds a Gypsy-image which is relatively "homogenous, stereotypical and fraught with negative bias" (129).
Researchers have offered a complex multi-faceted construction of identity. Petrova suggests that the Roma are a "continuum of more or less related subgroups with complex, flexible, and multilevel identities with sometimes strangely overlapping and confusing subgroup names" (Petrova 2003, 114). Marushiakova and Popov (2004) identify the Roma as a part of the Gypsy group, an ethnic community which migrated from India to Eastern Europe more than one thousand years ago. They suggest that Gypsies can be divided into a number of separate groups, subgroups, and meta-group units with their own ethnic and cultural features. The separate parts of the community have a group consciousness and alliance to a meta-group order, although they are typically clearly differentiated from one another. According to Marushiakova and Popov, the typical Gypsy community shares several common characteristics, including the presence of group consciousness, the use of a common language or another language among the Gypsies who lost their native Romani language, as well as common values, behavioural patterns, opinions, and moral principles.
The collective term "Roma" has been increasingly used to embrace, not only the Romani ethnic group found primarily in the Balkans and Central and Eastern Europe, but other diverse groups such as the "Gitanos" of Spain, the "Travelers" of England and Ireland, and the "Sinti" of Germany and Italy (Goldston 2002). It is difficult to establish to what extent there is a shared consciousness among groups which are externally labeled as Gypsies, and, in fact, many groups see themselves as ethnically distinct and harbor negative attitudes towards others (Marushiakova and Vesselin 2004; Petrova).
HISTORICAL OPPRESSION
It is generally believed that ethnic Roma migrated from India some time before 1000 A.D. They had settled in the Balkans by the fourteenth century and were residing in most European cities by the fifteenth century (Brearley 2001). The history of the Romani people is one of relentless persecution, as Puxon states: "from the Middle Ages to the present day, they have been the target of racial discrimination and outright genocide" (1987, 1).
Until as late as 1973, Roma children, for example, were taken by force and given to non-Roma parents to rear. Romani were enslaved until the 1860s, well after slavery had been abolished in the West Indies. In the nineteenth century overt forms of persecution diminished; however, the advent of social Darwinism and Aryan racism led to...
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