Making a difference without creating a difference: Super-diversity as a new direction for research on Roma minorities

Abstract

Academic and policy discourses recognise the diversity of Roma minorities, frequently using the word 'Roma' as an umbrella term that is meant to capture the inherent plurality of such populations. However, 'heterogeneity' can still prove to be an inadequate approach to diversity, as it categorises people and still positions them on an essentialising template of what it is to be 'Roma', which can discount their linguistic, cultural, socioeconomic and identification hybridities, or 'super-diversity'. 'Super-diversity' is a relatively new concept that is seen as a way to better represent the types of diversities that are normal amongst contemporary populations. This article looks at the trajectory of research on Roma minorities and examines the opportunities and challenges for using super-diversity as a way of articulating a new direction.

Roma Westward Migration in Europe: Rethinking Political, Social, and Methodological Challenges

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Spatial Exclusion and Boundary‐Making in Different Roma Neighbourhoods in Hungarian Rural Small Towns

“…). The diversity of Roma minorities reflects their linguistic, cultural, socio‐economic and identification hybridities and recognising this helps explain the rapid social transformations that current societies witness today as a result of issues of inequality, social mobility, inter‐marriage, and access to resources (Tremlett ).…”

Cultural Institutions as a Combat Sport. Reflections on the European Roma Institute

“…In practice, it seems to be a banal platitude to state that Roma are an ethnic minority 15 (as a matter of fact, they are generally presented as Europe's largest and most discriminated against ethnic minority), even though one that comprises of many highly diverse and dispersed groups (European Commission DG EMPL, 2004, p. 6;Tremlett, 2014) 16 , but their ethnicity is framed as somehow of a 'different kind' from that of most Roma minorities through the already existing policies and legislation, such as the Equal Treatment directive (European Commission, 2000). 13 Since European institutions have no binding power over how each state chooses to identify and recognize its minorities, every country has built its own Roma strategy identifying its beneficiaries based on the national perception of what the 'problem' is and who counts as 'Roma' (Surdu, 2016).…”