Country of residence

Sweden

Brief introduction

Teaching assistant, Bladins International School, Malmö Sweden

Education

Academic profile

The particularity of the Roma is quite interesting in the theoretical discussion of ethnicity and ethnic groups. The uniqueness of the Roma is much the same as it is for other ethnic groups. The ethnic belonging to the group is depended on the particular culture, language, traditions and experience that create boundaries to other ethnic groups. Moreover, family relations, gender relations and kinship are equally important in their forming of identity as a group. It is very interesting to investigate what constitutes family for Roma and how it is constructed, which are the social practices that reproduce their culture and the same time the racial differentiation in terms of identity. Also the issue of -visual-representation and authenticity is interesting enough in the Romani Studies. It is not hard to draw a parallel to Butler here. There is no authenticity, there is no original, there is no essence – only performances that constitutes the Roma as Roma. Whether this project is out of the hands of the Roma or not is not within the scope of research. What is interesting though is that these performances, by the Roma themselves (at least within the visual representations in numerous movies) and by ‘others’ reinforces and constitutes their marginalization further.

Publications

• 2010. Roma Human Rights, Master Thesis, Malmö Högskola

Keywords

Human rights, gender, health, visual representations

Contact

Kaltsidou.elli@gmail.com browse members list