Paper short abstract:

Looking at the humanitarian work conducted by Western Roma Pentecostals among Roma communities in Eastern Europe, this paper analyses the ways in which both 'givers' and 'receivers' continuously re-shift their understandings of moral duty, 'sameness' and 'otherness' in relation to one another.

Paper long abstract:

Mirroring the portrayal of the 'Global South' as an area of humanitarian intervention, Eastern Europe has recurrently been represented as a 'vulnerable' social-political space of Europe, with some communities (such as Roma/Gypsies) being the central focus of humanitarian attention (cf. Engebrigtsen 2007). Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork among Finnish Roma Pentecostal believers, and looking specifically at their engagement in humanitarian projects in Eastern Europe, this paper analyses the ways in which the social representation of 'otherness' is complicated by a situation in which 'sameness' constitutes the main incentive for the development of humanitarian projects. As volunteers who invest most of their savings into the practice of missionary-cum-developmental work in Eastern Europe, Finnish Roma Pentecostals can be seen as 'socially engaged Evangelicals'(cf. Elisha 2011), making a strong connection between their understanding of faith-in-practice and a sense of moral duty to intervene in the fate of perceived vulnerable populations. Furthermore, connecting their imaginations of a 'shared experience of marginalisation' with those they reach out to (i.e. Roma communities in other countries), these practices lead to the configuration of a seemingly collective subject of Evangelical and humanitarian interventions. As such, focusing on the encounters between Finnish Roma Pentecostals and the Eastern European Roma communities that are the focus of their humanitarian attention, this paper interrogates the ways in which a moral struggle to connect is embedded within the practice of religious humanitarianism itself and how imaginaries of the 'self' are continuously re-shifted within these specific forms of missionary/humanitarian encounters.