Staging Citizenship. Ioana Szeman
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Название: Staging Citizenship

Автор: Ioana Szeman

Издательство: Ingram

Жанр: История

Серия: Dance and Performance Studies

isbn: 9781785337314

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ for the status of refugee and migrant Roma in Italy, while van Baar (2017) proposes the concept of evictability to underline the internal biopolitical border within Europe. At the same time that Romanian Roma, who were EU citizens, were being expelled from Western Europe, impoverished Roma in Pod were literally and metaphorically being pushed to the margins of Romanian society through evictions, poverty and joblessness. I show how the precarious status of migrant Roma in the EU is predicated on the citizenship gap they experience in their countries. In Romania these expulsions failed to cause widespread outrage, as most non-Roma did not identify with those who were being expelled; media coverage condemned the migrants rather than the expulsions, reinforcing the citizenship gap for Roma. Furthermore, the Romanian government collaborated with its French counterpart in the repatriation process. There was widespread frustration in Romania at perceived anti-Romanian sentiments in France in the aftermath of the expulsions, and members of Romanian parliament proposed to replace the name of the ethnicity ‘Roma’ with ‘Ţigani’, supposedly to avoid further conflation between Roma and Romanians – as if Romanian Roma were not Romanian citizens. Such instances reveal the lived reality of the citizenship gap for Roma on the one hand, and the symbolic and actual reinforcement of this gap by many non-Roma, including politicians and state employees, on the other.

      Market expansion to the east, in the context of EU enlargement, and the corresponding import of civil society and democracy, including a focus on the Roma minority, have led to the recent ubiquity of Roma music and dance performances, both in the West and in Romania. The figure of the passionate Gypsy has become one of the latest sources of exoticism in the West. Marketed as timeless and exotic, Roma bands from Romania and other Balkan countries feature in international festivals; DJs play ‘Gypsy music’; Gypsy dress parties have spread, from London and Paris to New York and Houston. In Romania, Roma dance and music groups have proliferated, while new TV soaps about Roma (acted by non-Roma) and reality shows featuring famous Roma musicians (such as Clejanii, featuring Viorica) have become increasingly popular. However, the visibility of Roma music and dance performance has not translated into Roma being recognized as citizens, despite the fact that Roma express cultural citizenship through these media.

      In the rest of this introduction I provide a detailed description of the main threads of the book’s argument, followed by a brief overview of the history of the Roma in Romania and wider region, a discussion of the book’s methodology, and a chapter outline.

      Performance and the Citizenship Gap

      In this book I focus on performances by and about Roma – in the media, onstage, in schools and at international and local festivals – in relation to the citizenship gap and to symbolic and tacit understandings of who is included in the nation and the collective ‘we’. I show how these representations influence the perception and racialization of Roma among non-Roma, including in everyday encounters, cultural events, and social programmes organized by state institutions and NGOs. I examine the citizenship gap in the everyday lives of Pod residents, and the ways they resist that citizenship gap through dance and performance, which I analyse as expressions of cultural citizenship. I draw out the tensions between the state’s definitions and recognition of the Roma on the one hand, and Roma activists and NGOs who resist or inadvertently СКАЧАТЬ