Paper Short Abstract:

Brazil’s race quotas have garnered mixed responses from within the Romani (Cigano) communities. Romani individuals pursuing higher education and their families must adopt a series of measures to balance family life and gender expectations while avoiding community's reproach.

Paper Abstract:

The improved educational opportunities in Brazil's interior, coupled with affirmative action and racial quotas policies at public universities, have provided novel opportunities for poor, Black, Indigenous, and Romani people, also known as Ciganos. The quotas for Romanies are unique even from a global perspective, and while these policies have received praise from scholars and activists, they have garnered mixed responses within the Cigano communities. In fact, most reserved places remain unused. On the one hand, higher education is challenging to balance with family life, kinship, gender expectations, and economic factors, which are all interconnected. On the other hand, social mobility, which higher education can provide, often leads to detachment from the community and may result in a kind of social death. In this paper, I will delve into the experiences of two Romani women who decided to pursue higher education. I will explore the measures and strategies they and their families have taken to ensure that these women can continue their studies while still maintaining close ties to their community, even when studying hundreds of kilometres away from home.