关键词：民族性；罗姆少数民族；青年；耻辱；民族自豪感；罗姆中产阶级

来源： Identity 2014-volume 21 number 5

On pride, shame, passing and avoidance: an inquiry into Roma young people’s relationship with their ethnicity

Maria-Carmen Pantea

Roma ethnicity is one of the most stigmatized identities of today’s Europe. An emerging discourse on ‘Roma pride’ aims to reshape this widespread perception, especially among the educated youth. Drawing on 57 interviews with young people with/in higher education in Romania, this article look into their experiences of self-identification as Roma. On the one hand, this article identified a tendency for young people to move in a conceptual space, dominated by an understanding of ethnicity as bounded and static. On the other hand, it identified an emerging tendency for flexible, hybrid identifications that deliberately avoided reifying ethnicity (e.g. being a Roma of a different kind and living beyond ethnic labels). The article calls for more informed approaches addressing ethnic identification, which avoid assumptions of stable identification and embrace more complex understandings of the social dynamics involved.

Keywords ethnicity, Roma minority, youth, stigma, ethnic pride, Roma middle class