Roma Integration and Institutional Practices with Roma/Gypsies in Postsocialist Hungary (Research Brief)

Through in-depth interviews and participant observation in diverse institutional environments in postsocialist Hungary, my study examines institutional practices with Roma/Gypsies. In public events and everyday interactions in diverse organizations with Roma/Gypsy leadership, I saw Roma using varied strategies to challenge negative perceptions of their ethnic group. They challenged the historical exclusion of Roma/Gypsy culture from celebrations of national heritage in Hungary, and promote multiculturalism as a viable and valid framework for the postsocialist European context.

Heather Tidrick, of the Univeristy of Michigan, was a 2011-2012 Individual Advanced Research Opportunities (IARO) fellow.