Being Roma in Belfast : challenges, experiences and exclusion

• Main Author: Tohani, Maneka
• Published: Queen's University Belfast 2017
• Subjects: 305.8914
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.728679

This work that deals with themes of discrimination, exclusion and marginality amongst Roma migrants in Belfast, exploring how these are experienced in the spheres of employment, housing, education and healthcare. The research is based on participant -observation within the Roma community and on interviews with those providing education, healthcare and social services to the Roma community. The work shows how the experiences of marginality which Roma bring from their home country of Romania are both reproduced and transformed in the new context of Belfast. Attention is paid to the structural factors involved in these experiences of marginality, including historic and ongoing discrimination, economics, migration law and educational deprivation, as well as to cultural factors, including Roma approaches to work, marriage customs and childcare practices, and attitudinal factors, including both Roma attitudes to 'outsiders', and the attitudes of the established Belfast population, including those who work in government agencies, towards the Roma. The work concludes that difference is sustained from both inside and outside the Roma community, but that this sustenance of difference ultimately works to maintain the marginalised position of the Roma in Belfast. The work concludes by offering practical proposals aimed at facilitating better integration of the Roma community in Belfast within the spheres of education, employment and healthcare and by suggesting ways that cultural awareness regarding Roma in Belfast might be increased.