Studying racialisation of Romanies relationally. An example from Brazil

0565566 - EÚ 2023 eng A - Abstract
Fotta, Martin
Studying racialisation of Romanies relationally. An example from Brazil.
[Annual Meeting of the Gypsy Lore Society and Conference on Romani Studies 2022. Belgrade, 28.09.2022-30.09.2022]
Method of presentation: Prezentace
Event organizer: Serbian Academy of Sciences
URL events: https://www.gypsyloresociety.org/annual-meeting 
Grant - others:AV ČR(CZ) LQ300582201
Program: Prémie pro perspektivní výzkumné pracovníky – Lumina quaeruntur
Institutional support: RVO:68378076
Keywords : Romanies * Racialisation * Infectious diseases
OECD category: Antropology, ethnology

In scholarship different racialised communities have been traditionally approached in isolation from each other, only in relation to whiteness and through white/non-white boundaries. Similarly, social position and characteristics attributed to Romani people have been analysed primarily in relation to non-Roma and, especially in Europe, as a specific example of minoritisation. This paper argues that when research shifts to exploring Romani experiences in Latin America and the Atlantic (Fotta & Sabino-Salazar 2021), limits of such approach become particularly salient: since race-based exploitation and control did not develop from some unitary regime of racialisation, formation of different subalternised groups, including Romanies, has to be analysed in relation to each other and emergence of different ethno-racial categories must be understood as co-produced and co-constitutive (Molina et al 2019). I will illustrate this on an example from the 19th-century Brazil, when Ciganos (Romanies) became associated with the spread of trachoma. Normally one would remain within Romani studies and compare these processes to analogous ones occurring in Europe during the same period (Shmidt 2019) or to views of Romanies at other places and times (e.g. scapegoating, association with filth etc.). I argue, however, for the need to read across race-based subdisciplines and problematisations, which tend to pre-constitute groups and group-based conceptualisations. I will suggest that studying the association between trachoma and Ciganos in Brazil, requires bringing together insights from Romani studies, history of migration (white settlers from Europe) and the birth of race science in Brazil (Afro-Brazilians).
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0337305