Paper short abstract:

'Gypsy palaces' have been analysed along external criteria such as appearance, costs, or the statements that they make for others. This paper discusses them as dwelling spaces where transnational financial flows intersect local daily lives and where relatedness is reshaped by spatial arrangements.

Paper long abstract:

Since their appearance in the nineties across Romania, 'Gypsy palaces' have sparked controversy. While the wider public is repelled by their bad taste or frustrated with the contradiction between their opulence and their owners' reliance on social provisioning, artists celebrate these mansions' 'confrontational' style (Gianferro n.d.), and anthropologists read their conspicuousness as the Roma's 'quest for recognition' (Tesar 2016:187). Prompting rumours that their owners do not in fact live in them, but in adjacent huts, these imposing (but often unfinished) houses belonging are usually depicted from the outside, in terms of the statements that they make for others.

This paper turns the analysis inwards, and discusses conspicuous Roma houses not only as statements of economic prowess and social respectability, but also as spaces of habitation—as homes. Describing the lack of spatial specialization, whereby a room can have several functions (bedrooms become living-rooms, and kitchens can serve as bedrooms) for various people at various times, and accounting for the aesthetic and functional intentions with which inhabitants invest their houses, the paper proposes an ethnography of Roma habitation. I show that these houses exhibit the Roma's preference towards shared and versatile spaces which reflect their view of sociality, and discuss how spatial arrangements reshape the relations between people. Focusing on the flows of personnel and money that intersect inside the house, I analyse Roma houses both as spatial renditions and as modifiers of Roma relatedness and sociality, against the background of wider society in relation to which they stand.