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Description
The socio-economic practices of Romanian Roma in the context of changing industrial relations and uneven territorial development’ addresses problems inherent of job insecurity, low incomes, dangerous working conditions, inadequate housing, underdeveloped housing areas, migration.
We address these challenges via a comprehensive case study conducted in Maramures county using diverse field research methods (in-depth and oral history interviews, participant observation, survey) and contextualizing local data by the means of statistical, historical and policy analysis. Beyond the academic publications that it delivers, the project has the ambition to formulate policy recommendations regarding employment and social security, public social housing, access to adequate housing of the vulnerable groups, urban planning and territorial development. The latter will result both from our investigations and from the collaborative workshops organized by us with the participation of representatives of public institutions and non-governmental organizations.
We plan to understand processes that (re)produce racialized marginalization across changing political economy. Our project will advance a novel theorization of how industrialization, deindustrialization and reindustrialization at the European peripheries inserted into the global economy leads to marginalization, and how are racialized people dealing with it.
Besides the academic dialogue conducted on professional platforms, our project is expected to benefit public administrators, employers, trade unionists, academics and activists keen to contribute to the betterment of the most hardly tested ethnic minority in Romania and generally speaking of low-income people and/or people enforced to live in inadequate housing.
The Romanian-Norwegian partnership adds a global dimension to this project in the sense that it explores the precarious lives of Roma migrants in the Nordic countries.
Summary of project results
The project addressed how policies of de- and re-industrialization, development, and housing shaped historically people’s labor positions, housing conditions, and migration strategies, with a special focus on how racialized Roma persons and communities were affected by these processes. The Romanian (BBU, Cluj) and Norwegian teams (FAFO institute, Oslo) managed to connect local, national and transnational perspectives on these matters. To explain the still high rates of poverty in Romania at large, and not only among the Roma population, in a country from the peripheries of Eastern Europe, an EU Member State since 2007, upgraded by the World Bank to a high-income country group in 2019, we traced the interconnected roles of material and nonmaterial factors in the (re)production of “Roma poverty” from prewar capitalism to contemporary neoliberalism. We engaged in comparative historical analysis across several disciplines, clarifying how this poverty was manufactured historically, politically, economically, and culturally by different development models, welfare/housing systems, and racialization processes under various political economy regimes.
We addressed the above-mentioned challenges via a comprehensive case study conducted in Maramureș County. We used diverse field methods (in-depth and oral history interviews, participant observation, and survey) and contextualized local information by collecting statistical, historical, and policy data on Romania, Maramureș country, and the city of Baia Mare from archives. Our transdisciplinary analyses were transposed into 21 scientific articles (8 papers published in a special issue of the OA access journal; 3 papers in other OA journals; 10 articles submitted to ISI journals, of which 4 already published in the OA regime); two collective volumes (one contracted at Routledge, and the other contracted at Presa Universitară Cluj), and one single-authored monograph submitted to Palgrave; and a policy brief. The team members participated in various international conferences with a total of 29 papers. In addition, we also organized two online conferences, including the closing project conference, Exploring Racial Capitalism: Critical Romani Studies in Central and Eastern Europe, in collaboration with CEU’s Roma Studies Program. Targeting larger audiences, we realized and promoted five podcast episodes. At the end of the project, we elaborated and submitted two new project proposals. The major results of PRECWORK are available online - https://precwork.granturi.ubbcluj.ro/en/home/
The Political Economy of Extreme Poverty in Eastern Europe: A Comparative Historical Perspective of Romanian Roma, E. Vincze, C. Ban, S. Gog & J. H. Friberg (eds), contracted at Routledge: the book engages in dialogue with an international audience, by using a longitudinally and spatially comparative approach delving into the socioeconomic drivers of poverty, including its racialized forms.
Muncă, locuire, migrație, etnicitate: transformări sociale și industriale din Maramureș în interviuri, documente și cifre (1950‐2023), G. Troc & M. Mărginean (eds), contracted at Presa Universitară Cluj: a mirror of the project, this volume provides access to various data it collected.
From Social Solidarity of Workers to Capitalist Racialization: Roma Unskilled Labour in Romanian Industries, by S. Gog (submitted to Palgrave): engages in dialogue with scholars on the formation of ghettos in capitalism as incorporated spaces constituting a constant resource of cheap and disposable labor.
Analysis of the Situation of Roma from Marginalized Communities in Baia Mare in the Context of Development, housing, and Labor Policies, policy brief shared with local and national level institutions of public administration, research centers, and libraries; it presents locally relevant recommendations regarding growth models, access to decent jobs and housing in Baia Mare, and Roma discrimination and exclusion, and includes a section jointly elaborated with activists from Roma organizations with larger expertise across different regions of Romania.
Summary of bilateral results
Bilateral cooperation has strengthened:- By conducting research in Romania and Norway on similar topics within the same project;- Combining national and transnational perspectives on the study of international migration (of the Roma people) as a strategy to cope with poverty, but as well as a practice that reproduces inequalities;- By writing some joint papers and co-editing the English collective volume;- By elaborating and submitting two new project proposals at the end of the PRECWORK project.