Inside the ghetto

How can young Roma envisage a better future and their own empowerment? We have heard from older community activists, and practitioners and researchers with long-standing community involvement, but the voice of young people has not been so apparent. A report of a visit by Andrew Ryder to a Roma settlement in a small provincial Hungarian town may give us some insights. He was accompanied by Professor Karunanithi, an academic based in India, and Katya Dunajeva, a PhD student from the University of Oregon, who had been conducting fieldwork in the community visited by the group. For nine months Katya had been giving support to young Roma people in the community centre and after-school club. Andrew Ryder describes this visit.

We were surrounded by a group of ten or so children and young people aged between 7 and 19. The dynamics of the meeting took a series of sharp turns. Tired after a long school day, at first there was frivolity on the part of the children, with some playing out extreme caricatures of the community to test our reaction. Katya felt also that this flippancy was prompted by weariness on the part of the young people at the stream of funders, decision makers, researchers and students who descend on the community and just as suddenly depart, often not to be seen again. Later Katya informed me that adults in the community often greet (non-Roma) newcomers to the ghetto by asking what the visitors can help with, whether they can provide some financial or other support. According to Katya, ‘this expectation of the “outsiders” assistance often further immobilises the community and crowds out grassroots resourcefulness to tackle poverty and various disadvantages that most Roma people face today‘.

Passing through the first phase, of gaiety, the young people were inquisitive about India and the UK and, through Katya acting as translator, a dialogue was initiated that eventually turned to focus on what they wanted for themselves and their community.

“I want to have a girl and a boy. I want to have a job. I want to be a server/waitress.