Vera Messing

Good practices addressing school integration of Roma/Gypsy children in Hungary

Our recent project 1 has a comparative perspective: it compares selected good practices of integration of ethnic minority children among three European countries (Italy, Switzerland and Hungary). The project examines several key areas of integration: governmental policies, NGO practices and most importantly good practices that might be transferable, irrespective of differences regarding national environment and ethnic group. We focus here on Hungary and aim to identify key elements of good practices of integrating Roma/Gypsy 2 children such as creative pedagogical methods, differentiated personal treatment of children with learning problems, a multicultural curriculum, teacher training, extracurricular activities, community building and family involvement. This paper describes an innovative and transferable practice that promotes inclusion and addresses low school‐performance and high dropout rates among low status Roma children. The ‘Learnery’ project is an after‐school programme run by the minority community with the professional assistance of the public school. Results of the innovative practice are convincing: improved school performance, significant decrease in dropout rates, improved community relationships, and decrease of interethnic conflicts within the school.

Methodological puzzles of surveying Roma/Gypsy populations

European countries as well as the European Union are continually striving for comparable and reliable statistics about Roma, which is a precondition to efficiently support the design and implementation of national and European Union wide inclusion strategies and sectorial policies as well as monitoring their outcomes. This article aims to provide an overview of the theoretical and practical challenges researchers need to face in the course of designing and conducting survey among ‘Roma’ populations. A number of factors – such as dilemmas about the definition of the target population, methodology of sampling of a population with multiple and threatened identity, difficulties of constructing comparable indicators – have led to greatly diverging outcomes of various ‘Roma’ surveys in terms of the most essential statistics, such as the size of the population, geographical dispersion, level of poverty, level of education and employment rate. This article will summarize the various methodological decisions that research has to make by providing illustrative examples of recent research in Hungary, Romania and the European Union. It attempts to demonstrate the actual consequences of methodological decisions in terms of the varying outcomes of a crucial indicator – employment rate – produced by six independent surveys. The article’s conclusions are further reaching: data on Roma minorities are a requirement for evidence-based, efficient policy making targeted at social inclusion of Roma in Europe, and therefore understanding methodological dilemmas in the collection of this data is essential.

Differentiation in the Making: Consequences of School Segregation of Roma in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia

This article examines how various forms of ethnic segregation in education affect everyday life and future aspirations of Roma youth in three Central and Eastern European countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. It draws on a comparative European investigation about the diverging experiences and paths of ethnic minority youth in Europe (EDUMIGROM1 1EDUMIGROM “Ethnic differences in education and diverging paths for ethnic minority youth in an enlarged Europe” was an FP7-funded research led by Prof. Júlia Szalai and Viola Zentai at the Center for Policy Studies (CPS), Central European University (CEU), between 2008 and 2011. The author was a member of the coordinating team at CPS, CEU. www.edumigrom.eu.). The article investigates how segregation actually comes about in Central and Eastern Europe and looks at ways in which various forms of separation shape the everyday experiences and future aspirations of youth through the lenses of 14–15-year-old Roma students and their teachers. It reveals that studying in segregated Roma schools limits young Romas’ chances for further education and deprives them of interethnic social networks. Meanwhile, studying in segregated classes of ethnically mixed schools has a devastating effect on the development of young people’s identity, self-esteem, and interethnic relationships.

Apart or Together: Motivations Behind Ethnic Segregation in Education across Europe

There is a longstanding academic and policy debate about the possible causes underlying the performance gap between ethnic majority and minority students across Europe. The fact that ethnic minority students underperform compared with their peers from the majority has been widely demonstrated by a range of national as well as cross-country comparative studies (OECD 2006, Crul and Schneider 2008, Holsinger 2009, Dronkers 2010, Park and Sandefour 2010). A number of factors underlying this gap have been identified, of which the most important are the generally lower socioeconomic status of ethnic minority populations and the linguistic disadvantages of children from such backgrounds. However, by analysing the intersecting effects of these two factors, some important country-specific differences were revealed: when groups with similar status and identical language backgrounds were compared, the gap disappeared in several countries (France, Norway and Sweden), diminished significantly in others (for example, in Germany), but stayed significant in others (Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland) (Park and Sandefour 2010). These results suggest that behind the performance gap there must be other factors related to the organisation and practices of education.

Is ethnicity a meaningful category of employment policies for Roma? A comparative case study of Hungary and Spain

ABSTRACT This paper aims to inquire into the potential of active labour market policies (LMP) to reach out to unemployed Roma population in Hungary and in Spain. While in Hungary unemployed Roma people are mainly thought to be reached through mainstream measures, Spain represents a more complex regime with an emphasis on ethnically targeted programmes. Our analysis draws on a wider comparative research project (NEUJOBS) conducted in 2012/2013 and provides an insight into how LMP function locally for unemployed Roma. We conclude that there are two intersecting challenges regarding the success of LMP that aim to influence the employment situation of the Roma: the targeting strategies and the quality and complexity of the programmes’ design. Our empirical data suggest that both aspects need to be given equal attention in order to promote the inclusion of the Roma into the labour market.

Disempowered by the media: causes and consequences of the lack of media voice of Roma communities

ABSTRACT Roma communities have experienced widespread historical exclusion in most European countries. The media can be a powerful instrument of a group’s inclusion into the mental map of a society, or, on the contrary, it can contribute to the group’s exclusion and disempowerment. This article builds on a series of content and discursive analyses of the news media’s coverage of Hungarian Roma communities since 1993, interviews with stakeholders and focus group discussions in Roma communities. It scrutinises media reporting about Roma and argues that, in general, the scope and the agenda of Roma’s portrayal coincide with mainstream society’s stereotypes about the group. The article will additionally look at the media’s disempowering role from two perspectives: on the one hand, the extent to which Roma have access to influencing media content, and on the other hand, it will consider the role of minority communities in challenging stereotypical images.

With Eyes Wide Shut. Job Searching Qualified Roma and Employee Seeking Companies

This article is dedicated to Julia Szalai who researches the underlying reasons, consequences and mechanisms of the social exclusion of the Roma in Central and East European societies. Her work and her writings serve as a compass for those who examine problems of social exclusion, including the authors of this article. The present paper discusses position of the Roma on the Hungarian job-market, focusing on highly-qualified young Roma within the context of the business sphere. Our knowledge is informed by the first results of an initiative which creates bridges between disadvantaged social groups and the business sector through pro-active measures. The initiative mobilizes multinational companies, business trainers, NGOs promoting social inclusion, and academics. Both the initiative and our study intend to pursue a subtle understanding of the tangible and hidden obstacles that highly educated young Roma encounter when seeking employment, and of the dilemmas that multinational companies face in relating to these prospective employees.

Romaphobia and the media: mechanisms of power and the politics of representations

ABSTRACT This special issue of Identities, entitled ‘Romaphobia and the media’, examines entrenched and ongoing media coverage of Roma, Gypsy and Traveller people across Europe. The focus is on how the media problematises the Roma, how it constructs a ‘conceptual map’ about Roma people and what this tells us about the societies we live in. This special issue includes five academic articles all examining the constructions and stereotypes used in the media in various formats and European countries. After these academic articles, this special issue then deviates from the normal journal structure by including three commentary pieces from professionals from varying Roma backgrounds to give their views and experiences on how they tackle Romaphobia and the media. The inclusion of these commentary pieces are very powerful in offering a perspective of active interventions and resistance that we should not forget amidst the depressing continued circulation of racialised stereotypes.