Country of residence

Czech Republic

Brief introduction

PhD candidate, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague

Education

Masters (Social Anthropology, 2009, Charles University in Prague – Department of Anthropology)

Academic profile

Czech discourse on “abusers” of benefits, links categories of poverty, ethnicity and morality and determines meanings about the quality of social benefits’ beneficiaries. When unemployed Roma say that they are going to go “begging” to the welfare office, the close relationship between benefits’ money and the quality of its holders is demonstrated. They stress skills which are involved with active “begging” rather than passive “receiving” of money, and in doing so, they touch on the quality of relations between welfare professionals and beneficiaries. Within the context of changing welfare politics this study aims to explore the dominant economic practices that unemployed Czech Roma use to acquire benefits. It examines the ways in which Roma handle social benefits on the local level and on a long-term scale (e.g. the earmarking, saving, and spending of these monies). Through the use of multiple methodologies in various social settings, this project aims to identify which processes within the social welfare system establish relations of inequality in Czech society and how unemployed Roma withstand these relations.

Publications

• “Earmarking of benefit money in neoliberal regime: An interplay of poverty, ethnicity and morality in Czech Republic”.  (conference paper at the 1^st Graduate CASA – SASA Conference “The Economization of Life and Social Invequalities” in Telč, Czech Republic, 2.9.2011)
• “Deserving equality: the Roma and the system of social welfare in the town Skala”, unpublished thesis, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic – tutor Dr. Yasar Abu Ghosh.

Keywords

welfare politics, Roma / Gypsies, earmarking of money

Contact

terka.dvor@gmail.com browse members list