Paper short abstract:

The paper reviews the intersection of Romani Studies and the anthropology of human migration and displacement, and explores how various recent theoretical developments can jointly inform ethnographic inquiries into the transatlantic diasporic journeys of Romani groups.

Paper long abstract:

Historically, mobile lives among Romani peoples have mostly been understood through the lens of the nomadism/sedentarism diad. Since the 1990s, however, a shift has occurred, as concepts like migration, refuge, and diaspora proved useful to understand the East to West migratory movements of Romani groups in Europe. In its first section, the proposed paper looks at three different theoretical perspectives in Romani Studies that have developed since that shift: (i) a migration and refugee studies trend; (ii) a critical geography lens; and (iii) the use of the concepts of diaspora and cosmopolitanism. The text emphasizes recent literature that has operated within the space created by the three theoretical fields, relying on the productive cross-fertilization of their complementary insights.

The paper goes on to elaborate how these trends all added to the analysis of the diasporic connections explored by a multi-sited ethnographic project designed to shed light onto Romani transatlantic mobilities – the author’s doctoral dissertation. These networks and the exchanges among Romani families they beget, in contexts in the Americas such as Toronto and Bogota, speak to recent elaborations that consider diaspora as a condition that is lived and experienced within multiple “transnational realities created by migration” (Hage 2021: 2). A series of ethnographic vignettes are interwoven with the text, providing the necessary context to ground ongoing conversations on the potential of such a conceptual stance, especially for engaging Romani peoples outside of Europe.