| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Roma ethnicity is one of the most stigmatised 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 looks 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 avoid 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.
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