Construction of Roma identity in Eastern and Central Europe: perception and self‐identification

Roma people are the most numerous and most disadvantaged of all ethnic minority groups living in contemporary Central and Eastern Europe. The use of the category of Roma varies a great deal in Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. While the stereotypes, attitudes and prejudices concerning the Roma minority suggest the presence of a highly homogenised and unified group, the actual population meant by the category of Roma varies according to the nature of the encounter. Moreover, not only do members of the non‐Roma majority fail to agree who is Roma and who is not Roma, but there is no match between the results of the outgroup and ingroup categorisation. This mismatch is especially striking in Hungary. Explanatory models presented in this paper show differences in the structure of sociological determinants of categorisation between the three countries studied. As far as the nature of outgroup categorisation is concerned, the study showed that, compared to the general level of prejudice of the population, the anti‐Gypsy prejudice is significantly less intense among the non‐Roma interviewers in the survey, whose task was to categorise the respondents, but interviewers cannot be considered to have no anti‐Gypsy bias altogether.