Roma In Canada 1997 2020

If you've ever been curious about the mystique of the Roma, pejoratively called Gypsies, this book is an excellent guide to their culture and customs as well as explaining the difference between the various Romani groups, their fascinating origins and their precarious place in society. Focusing on the Roma's experiences with the Canadian immigration and refugee process, the author, an immigration counsellor, tells a riveting story, using many of their personal anecdotes of why they came and how they were treated. Despite being one of the most welcoming countries for refugees in the world, this book explores a somewhat secretive system of determining who deserves Canada's protection that puts into question the system's reputation for equality. Canada's fairness and compassion has let the Roma down, leading to many failed claims and deportations that were later found to be unjustified and in some cases, illegal. Facing a life of brutal prejudice and even violence, if returned to Europe, the Roma's heartbreaking story is a glimpse into the complex world of refugees.

If you’ve ever been curious about the mystique of the Roma, pejoratively called Gypsies, this book is an excellent guide to their culture and customs as well as explaining the difference between the various Romani groups, their fascinating origins and their precarious place in society. Focusing on the Roma’s experiences with the Canadian immigration and refugee process, the author, an immigration counsellor, tells a riveting story, using many of their personal anecdotes of why they came and how they were treated. Despite being one of the most welcoming countries for refugees in the world, this book explores a somewhat secretive system of determining who deserves Canada’s protection that puts into question the system’s reputation for equality. Canada’s fairness and compassion has let the Roma down, leading to many failed claims and deportations that were later found to be unjustified and in some cases, illegal. Facing a life of brutal prejudice and even violence, if returned to Europe, the Roma’s heartbreaking story is a glimpse into the complex world of refugees.

The culmination of four years of ethnographic research at the Roma Community Centre in Toronto, Writing the Roma is the first book to provide an overview of the identities, origins, history and treatment of Roma refugees. Cynthia Levine-Rasky traces the historical and cultural roots of the Roma in Europe, through their genocide in the Holocaust, their persecution in Eastern Europe in the post-Communist era, to their settlement as refugees in Canada. What emerges is a book that challenges the stereotypes surrounding this non-territorial nation while exposing the ways that Canadian immigration policies have affected Roma populations.

Drawing upon the empirical scholarship and research expertise of contributors from all settled continents and from diverse life settings and economies, Viral Loads illustrates how the COVID-19 pandemic, and responses to it, lay bare and load onto people’s lived realities in countries around the world. A crosscutting theme pertains to how social unevenness and gross economic disparities are shaping global and local responses to the pandemic, and illustrate the effects of both the virus and efforts to contain it in ways that amplify these inequalities. At the same time, the contributions highlight the nature of contemporary social life, including virtual communication, the nature of communities, neoliberalism and contemporary political economies, and the shifting nature of nation states and the role of government. Over half of the world’s population has been affected by restrictions of movement, with physical distancing requirements and self-isolation recommendations impacting profoundly on everyday life but also on the economy, resulting also, in turn, with dramatic shifts in the economy and in mass unemployment. By reflecting on how the pandemic has interrupted daily lives, state infrastructures and healthcare systems, the contributing authors in this volume mobilise anthropological theories and concepts to locate the pandemic in a highly connected and exceedingly unequal world. The book is ambitious in its scope – spanning the entire globe – and daring in its insistence that medical anthropology must be a part of the growing calls to build a new world.

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library. This book, designed as a resource for scholars, educators, activists and non-specialist readers, presents the results of new research on the role of Romani groups in European culture and society since the nineteenth century. Its specific focus is on the ways in which Romani actors, in their interactions with non-Romanies, have contributed to shaping Europe’s public spaces. Twelve chapters recount the experiences and accomplishments of individuals and families, from across Europe (England, France, Spain, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Finland) and Canada. All based on new research, and maintaining a focus on the real lives and activities of Romani people rather than on the perspective of the majority societies, these studies exemplify the creative presence of Romani people in the fields of politics, economics and culture. We see them as writers, artists and performers, political activists and resistance fighters, traders and entrepreneurs, circus and cinema managers and purveyors of popular science. Sensitive to the ambivalent position from which Roma act, the cases are linked and contextualized by a general introduction and by section introductions written by leading scholars of Romani studies with expertise in history, ethnography, musicology, literary and discourse studies and visual culture. The volume is richly illustrated, including many images that have never been published before, and includes an extensive bibliography / guide to further reading. Contributors to the volume: Begoña Barrera, Beatriz Carrillo de los Reyes, Malte Gasche, Paweł Lechowski, Anna G. Piotrowska, Laurence Prempain, Juan Pro, Eve Rosenhaft, Carolina García Sanz, María Sierra, and Tamara West.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND. Drawing on Roma community voices and expert research, this book provides a powerful tool to challenge conventional discourses and analyses on Romani identity, poverty and exclusion. Through the transformative vehicle of a ‘Social Europe’, this edited collection presents new concepts and strategies for framing social justice for Romani communities across Europe. The vast majority of Roma experience high levels of exclusion from the labour market and from social networks in society. This book maps out how the implementation of a new ‘Social Europe’ can offer innovative solutions to these intransigent dilemmas. This insightful and accessible text is vital reading for the policymaker, practitioner, academic and activist.

This book explores the ways in which minority groups across the world are reshaping the international minority rights protection system. It documents the actions of four major groups that are using transnational social mobilisation to achieve recognition of their identities and their rights. The result is a greater pluralism in global identity politics and a wide range of new group-specific standards that can inform policies on multiculturalism, political participation, and socio-economic inclusion in the national and international spheres. The book begins by summarising the learning from the global movements of indigenous peoples and Roma. The book then focuses in greater depth on the cases of Afro-descendants in Latin America and of Dalits and caste-affected groups in South Asia and beyond. Each case study shows the historical roots of group-specific transnational mobilisation and how activists have constructed a distinct identity frame out of shared experiences. The book explores key parallels and differences between the discourse, framing strategies, organisational structures and political opportunities used in each case to show which factors have influenced the success or failures of their norm entrepreneurship. The role that international institutions have played in supporting these efforts is given special attention, including intergovernmental bodies such as the UN, the EU and the OAS, and international non-governmental organisations. The UN World Conference Against Racism is explored as a particularly significant political opportunity across the cases. Among academic audiences, this book will appeal to those researching minority rights, social movements, global governance, discrimination and multiculturalism from legal, political, sociological and critical theory perspectives. It will also interest practitioners and activists working on minority rights and the challenges of norm compliance, socio-economic inclusion and governance.