The book focuses on civil society: established institutions and forums, radical groups, NGOs, and self-organised individuals who are promoting inclusion and welfare of Eastern European Roma in the name of shared ethnic identities, religious closeness, and universal human rights in Greater Helsinki, Finland. Special attention is directed to methodological issues regarding the research for/with/by Roma.
This anthology ‘The Culture of the Finnish Roma’ is a highly needed collection of articles intended for a wide audience, in Finland and internationally. The editors of the anthology, when participating in many international conferences and seminars, have often been asked: Is there Roma research in Finland? What is it like? Which perspectives does it utilize? The main function of this anthology is to reply to those questions. It compiles an array of contemporary Roma research done in present day Finland, both by Finnish, Finnish Roma, and international scholars. It will be of interest to both academic as well as lay readers interested in Roma culture and Roma life in Finland, past and present. The chapters focus on the research and the life of Roma in Finland. Bringing to light the various sides of the Romani way of life, scholars from different fields include historians, linguists, anthropologists, and cultural and social researchers. Many of the previous books have suffered from a recycling of materials that mythologize and stereotype Romani people. Including the viewpoint of Roma scholars and diverse research branches ranging from culture, language, religion, and gender, the anthology aims at overcoming the stereotypes and bring knowledge of aspects of Romani life. The eternal contemplation and negotiation of identities lies in the heart of any culture. We hope that the way The Culture of the Finnish Roma discusses these issues brings forth interesting topics to consider for any reader, regardless of national or ethnic origin.
Kirja on osa romani-trilogiaa. Tämä ensimmäinen osa (ilmestyi suomeksi 2012) käsittelee Itä-Euroopan romanien tuloa Suomeen ja tutkii EU:n vapaan liikkuvuuden direktiivin ja ihmisoikeuksien toteutumista romanien lähtö- ja tulomaissa. Romanipolitiikan vaikutuksia arvioidaan kansainvälisen ja kansallisen politiikan tasolla sekä suhteessa katutyötä tekevien romanien arkielämään ja maahanmuuton vaikuttimiin. Toinen osa (2020) keskittyy helsinkiläiseen solidaariseen aktivismiin; kolmas osa tulee antamaan äänen muuttajille itselleen. The book is part of the Roma Trilogy. This first volume (published in Finnish in 2012) considers the arrival of Eastern European Roma in Finland and examines the realisation of the EU’s free movement directive and human rights in countries of departure and arrival. The effects of Roma policies are evaluated on the level of international and national policies, as well as in relation to the everyday lives of Roma street workers and the motives behind migration. The second volume (2020) focuses on solidarity activism in Helsinki; the third volume will give voice to the migrants themselves.
This book advances critical discussions about what coloniality, decoloniality, and decolonisation mean and imply in the Nordic region. It brings together analysis of complex realities from the perspectives of the Nordic peoples, a region that is often overlooked in current research, and explores the processes of decolonisation that are taking place in this region. The book offers a variety of perspectives that engage with issues such as Islamic feminism and the progressive left; racialisation and agency among Muslim youths; indigenising distance language education for Sami; extractivism and resistance among the Sami; the Nordic international development endeavour through education; Swedish TV reporting on Venezuela; creolizing subjectivities across Roma and non-Roma worlds and hierarchies; and the whitewashing and sanitisation of decoloniality in the Nordic region. As such, this book extends much of the productive dialogue that has recently occurred internationally in decolonial thinking but also in the areas of critical race theory, whiteness studies, and postcolonial studies to concrete and critical problems in the Nordic region. This should make the book of considerable interest to scholars of history of ideas, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, international development studies, legal sociology, and (intercultural) philosophy with an interest in coloniality and decolonial social change.
This book explores the phenomenon of familyhood across borders, examining the experience of translocal familyhood and the manner in which lifelines in and between countries are formed when individual family members spend long periods away from home. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research, it considers the emotions, social relations, materialities and discourses that occur within family lives between Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Romania, Russia and Sweden. With attention to the ways in which gender, generation, class and geography create and reinforce inequalities, strengths and vulnerabilities within and between families, it combines ethnographic, descriptive work with shorter photography-based chapters in order to allow textual and visual methods to complement one another. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, geography and anthropology with interests in migration, transnationalism and the sociology of the family.
This is the first interdisciplinary collection to analyse the place of Romanies and Travellers within contemporary Europe through the lens of gender and violence. In hospitals, schools, and social assistance centres; in encounters with humanitarian agencies and the police; and in media and state representations, violence against Romanies and Travellers is always gendered. The contributors disentangle the array of relations, expectations, and beliefs that make gendered violences against Romanies and Travellers appear necessary, unavoidable, or appropriate. They examine forms of gendered violence that may develop within Romani and Traveller communities against this framework of oppression and attrition. The volume foregrounds the methodological and ethical challenges involved in researching gendered violences in Romani and Traveller contexts, questioning the relationships between gender, violence, and other experiences and concepts such as marginalisation, oppression, exclusion, harm, slow death, social suffering, and necropolitics. The volume is grounded in reflexive feminist standpoints with a collaborative ethos that offers proposals for further analysis, policy development, and engaged practice. It contributes to the theorising of gendered violence in the social sciences by assessing dominant models and perspectives in the light of overlooked Romani and Traveller experiences, and is particularly relevant to scholars from anthropology, gender studies, sociology, and social work.
This book explores the activism and solidarity movements formed by contemporary European citizens in opposition to populism, which has risen significantly in reaction to globalization, European integration and migration. It makes the counterforces to neo-nationalisms visible and re-envisions key concepts such as democracy/public sphere, power/empowerment, intersectionality and conflict/cooperation in civil society. The book makes a theoretical and empirical contribution to citizenship studies, covering several forms such as contestatory, solidary, everyday and creative citizenship. The chapters examine the diverse movements against national populism, othering and exclusion in various parts of the European Union, such as Denmark, Finland, the UK, Austria, Germany, France, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Italy. The national case studies focus on counterforces to ethnic and religious divisions, as well as genders and sexualities, various expressions of anti-migration, Romanophobia, Islamophobia and homophobia. The book’s overall focus on local, national and transnational forms of resistance is premised on values of respect and tolerance of diversity in an increasingly multi-cultural Europe.
This book brings together twelve scholars from various universities and research centres in Europe and Canada. All look at developments in the collective action of marginalised and/or disadvantaged people such as Gypsies, migrants, cleaners, or unemployed people in contemporary West European societies. The authors analyse how these people organise and mobilise within or across countries such as Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, or Italy. They note that although the collective actions of marginalised and/or disadvantaged people are not necessarily unusual, all these nationally based or cross-national mobilisations have in common the fact that many of these people seek to overcome various cultural, social, and political obstacles, act collectively, and intervene in the public space. The various contributors in this book observe that the mobilisations of the marginalised and/or disadvantaged are often linked to new patterns and forms of social and political marginalisation and inequality. The contributors analyse, therefore, these emerging patterns and they investigate the extent to which marginalised and/or disadvantaged people are of political significance in many of today’s West European societies.
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Citizenship is always in dispute – in practice as well as in theory – but conventional perspectives do not address why the concept of citizenship is so contentious. This unique book presents a new perspective on citizenship by treating it as a continuing focus of dispute.The authors dispute the way citizenship is normally conceived and analysed within the social sciences, developing a view of citizenship as always emerging from struggle. This view is advanced through an exploration of the entanglements of politics, culture and power that are both embodied and contested in forms and practices of citizenship. This compelling view of citizenship emerges from the international and interdisciplinary collaboration of the four authors, drawing on the diverse disputes over citizenship in their countries of origin (Brazil, France, the UK and the US). The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the field of citizenship, no matter what their geographical, political or academic location.
This book asks how 21st century technologies such as the Internet, mobile phones and social media are transforming human memory and its relationship to gender. Each epoch brings with it new media technologies that have transformed human memory. Anna Reading examines the ways in which globalised digital cultures are changing the gender of memory and memories of gender through a lively set of original case studies in the ‘globital age’. The study analyses imaginaries of gender, memory and technology in utopian literature; it provides an examination of how foetal scanning alters the gendered memories of the human being. Reading draws on original research on women’s use of mobile phones to capture and share personal and family memories as well as analysing changes to journalism and gendered memories, focusing on the mobile witnessing of terrorism and state terror. The book concludes with a critical reflection on Anna Reading’s work as a playwright mobilising feminist memories as part of a digital theatre project 'Phenomenal Women with Fuel Theatre' which created live and digital memories of inspirational women. The book explains in depth Reading’s original concept of digitised and globalised memory - ‘globital memory’ - and suggests how the scholar may use mobile methodologies to understand how memories travel and change in the globital age.
