Paper short abstract:

Via complex performance, Romani refugees from the 1999 Yugoslav war navigate their uncertain relationship between their former Kosovo home and their new home in Germany. Ritual celebrations reconfigure space and memory via music and dance by invigorating gendered European diasporia kinship networks.

Paper long abstract:

Via performance embedded in ritual, Romani refugees from the 1999 Yugoslav war navigate their uncertain relationship between their former Kosovo home and their new home in Germany. Family celebrations (now in banquet halls rather than homes) reconfigure space and memory via music and dance by invigorating gendered kinship networks in a European-wide diaspora where relatives travel to attend multiple day rituals. Migrants hold ambivalent meanings both about Kosovo (a mixture of nostalgia for “home,” and memories of racism, violence, revulsion, and trauma) and Germany (a mixture of safety, insecurity, intolerance, and culture shock). Many never desire to return home due to violent evictions and confiscated properties. Some display the psychological and physical effects of PTSD. After 23 years, Roma are still unwelcome and some are still being deported as “unworthy” migrants. European refugee policies have responded to precarity, the influx of new refugees, xenophobic populism, the fear of Muslims, and Kosovo being classified a “safe country.” In response to exclusion, the Romani social imaginary provides a measure of security by performatively displaying tradition as well as innovation. One Dortmund block is emerging as a center of Kosovo Romani cultural and religious life. Performative displays embedded in large celebrations creatively enact a Romani sensibility via new styles of music, dance, costume, and the revitalized Muslim religion. Embodying affective modalities via gendered rituals, migrants reaffirm their sense of belonging to a transnational community of Kosovo Roma. I trace the “intimacy of neighborhood and politics of the state” (Gray 2011) via performative modes.