From ‘Making a Living’ to ‘Getting Ahead’: Roma Women's Experiences of Migration

Drawing on qualitative interviews in six Roma communities from Transylvania (Romania), the paper examines women's histories of migration. It explores how gender norms and expectations intersect migration and what the perceived benefits and costs associated with mobility may be. Women's personal meanings of migration vary, from ensuring social mobility at home, to family survival. My research indicates that Roma women's migration is highly dependent on the 'gender regime' in their home communities. Whilst migration does not necessarily raise contestations of motherhood, migrants need to expend considerable effort to ensure a sense of respectability. The paper supports the argument that Roma women's migration is highly dependent on the 'gender regimes' in their home communities. Lastly, it calls for more refined policy interventions that consider the various 'subgroups' of women within Roma communities. Keywords: Roma WomenMigrationGenderStigmaTransylvania Acknowledgements The author would like to thank guest-editors Nando Sigona and Peter Vermeersch for their helpful comments which greatly improved the manuscript. Special thanks are also due to Pamela Hagwood and Caoimhe Luthers for carefully proof-reading the manuscript. Notes 1. Other similar concepts have been proposed: 'multiple discrimination', 'compound discrimination' and 'intersectional discrimination'. For more-refined definitions of the terms, see Bello (Citation2008). 2. Equating the level of traditionalism with language, clothing and internal divisions is often a practice, though it is highly contestable. Ultimately, a discussion on 'traditional' and 'modern' Roma would result in an equally open-to-bias debate on 'who is a Roma'. 3. Eg. having accommodation and a prearranged workplace with salary agreed beforehand. 4. These situations have their own complexity that would require a more detailed analysis than this paper is able to provide.