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Paper short abstract:

The paper presents the specifics of ethnographic field research on Romani children who are cared for by their grandparents in Bulgaria while their parents work abroad. Using a dialogical approach, I interviewed grandparents, teachers and students who are expected to talk about their problems.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents the impact of parental labour mobility on Romani children who are cared for by grandparents in Bulgaria and focuses specifically on how to do fieldwork among them. Children of migrant workers who remain in their home country are a well-studied group, and usually, the analyses refer to countries and regions that traditionally send large numbers of workers abroad such as the Caribbean, China, Romania, and others (Olwig, 1999; Robila, 2011; Chen, Yang, Zhou & Ren, 2019; and many others). However, the ethnographic work among children of migrant parents is a less discussed issue. For many kids whose fathers and mothers are working in European countries "home" means the absence of parents and missing supervision relationships between parents and children. There is a lack of direct care and upbringing on the part of parents, which causes problems in the school environment such as preparation for school and communication with teachers. Using a dialogical approach as the main strategy of fieldwork, I interviewed elderly people from different settlements, on the one hand, directors, homeroom teachers, and school staff, on the other. The topic of research is very sensitive because open-ended interviews are conducted with the students themselves, who are under 18 years of age and who are expected to talk about their problems. On the basis of the fieldwork results, I state that the approaches to students can be called 'mainstream' and 'specific' approaches, from which arise various challenges in the expectations of their progress in school and training.