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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.