In a high fertility context, research on the relationship between parental investment, unwanted births and child nutritional outcomes is limited. The implications may be especially relevant for children coming from the most disadvantaged backgrounds and at increased risk of nutritional deprivation. This study assessed the association between maternal investment, unwanted births disaggregated into mistimed and unwanted children, and child nutritional outcomes in a poor population of Serbian Roma. Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys rounds 5 and 6 data for Serbian Roma settlements were used to account for the association between two measures of maternal investment: weight at birth and parity, and mistimed and unwanted children, and children height-for-age z-score (HAZ), weight-for-age z score (WAZ) and weight-for- height z-score (WHZ). The sample included 130 children aged 0-24 months. The child variables were age, gender, and birth order, while maternal independent variables included age, literacy and access to improved toilet facility as proxies for socioeconomic status. Children born with low birth weight (lower maternal investment in utero) face a significant deficit in terms of their nutritional outcomes, measured by HAZ and WAZ. The effect was aggravated for height if the child was unwanted while there was a positive relationship between access to improved toilet facility and WHZ. Unwanted children were of higher birth order, with older, higher parity mothers than mistimed children. Many of the Roma children may be at risk of undernutrition, however, Roma children who received lower maternal investment in utero, unwanted and living in poorest households may face additional risk.

While many scholarly contributions have documented the socialist state policies deployed toward the Roma from Central and Eastern Europe, less attention was paid to how discourses and policies have aimed to turn the “non-European,” “backward Roma” into reformed and modernized subjects that were supposed to conform to an “European,” sedentary way of life. Thus, I discuss proletarization and sedentarization not as state policies but as programs and technologies of power, specific to a socialist governmentality. The article interrogates the programs, technologies of power and biopolitical regulations that allowed the state authorities to legitimize their intervention in the daily lives of the Roma, with profound depoliticizing effects. I analyze political programs, governmental reports on Roma and ministry regulations as instruments of governmentality through which the governance of the “Roma question” took shape. Special attention is given to data/knowledge production. Finally, the research pinpoints that the micro-scale and the everyday workings of the socialist technologies of power might explain the different trajectories of socio-economic adaptation among Roma groups, which some studies have revealed during post-socialism.

Research on paternal investment and child growth and development is limited outside of high-income countries. Using nationally representative data from low-resource Serbian Roma communities, this study examined father investment (direct care), its predictors and the associations between paternal investment, stepfather presence and child physical growth and early development. The sample included 1222 children aged 35–59 months, out of which 235 were living with biological fathers. Child outcomes included height-for-age Z-scores, stunting and early child developmental score. Roma paternal investment was relatively low. There was a positive association of father investment and children's height, and no association with developmental score. The presence of father vs. stepfather did not exert any influence on children. Instead, maternal and child characteristics explained both the overall development and height for Roma children. Thus, older children, born to literate, lower parity mothers of higher status and greater investment had better developmental and growth outcomes; girls were the preferred sex, owing to expected fitness benefits. Reverse causality emerged as the most likely pathway through which the cross-sectional association of father direct care with child growth may manifest, such that Roma fathers tend to bias their investment towards taller, more endowed children, because of greater fitness pay-off.

In discussions about ‘race’, empire, imperialism – and the decolonisation of the curriculum in European universities – the discipline of Romani Studies has, until recently, been relatively quiet. This article seeks to address this silence and offers commentary on the institutional silences, via both disciplinary historical and contemporary country-specific analysis. A case study is investigated to tease out the ontological and epistemological transitions from early 19th Century Gypsylorism to 21st Century Critical Romani Studies: the teaching and learning of Romani Studies at the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest. We argue that the legacy of Gypsylorism, as much as the political climate in which the teaching and learning of contemporary Romani Studies occurs, are important aspects to consider. In moving forwards, we suggest that the models and pedagogies adopted at CEU since 2015 offer a useful and critical template for other universities and departments to consider adopting in progressing Romani knowledge production.

Stigma and alienation are suffered by many individuals with mental health disorders, in societies around the world. Rejection is all the more common among those who have intellectual disabilities or who are from ethnic minorities. In this issue, three papers consider the suffering experienced by patients with vulnerabilities that militate against their being in receipt of the psychiatric care they assuredly deserve.

Moreau (2019) has raised concerns about the use of DNA data obtained from vulnerable populations, such as the Uighurs in China. We discuss another case, situated in Europe and with a research history dating back 100 years: genetic investigations of Roma. In our article, we focus on problems surrounding representativity in these studies. We claim that many of the circa 440 publications in our sample neglect the methodological and conceptual challenges of representativity. Moreover, authors do not account for problematic misrepresentations of Roma resulting from the conceptual frameworks and sampling schemes they use. We question the representation of Roma as a “genetic isolate” and the underlying rationales, with a strong focus on sampling strategies. We discuss our results against the optimistic prognosis that the “new genetics” could help to overcome essentialist understandings of groups.

Forty per cent of Europeans refuse to have Roma as their neighbours, while 80 per cent of these do not even have direct contact with them. Using these statistics as a point of departure, this study analyzes how attitudes toward Roma are constructed. It proposes to investigate this process in two similar environments but where local integration policies directed toward Roma differ, resulting in disparate forms of intergroup contact. The analysis is premised on two theoretical assumptions: that the integration of migrants is a local public policy issue and that intergroup contact frames attitudes between majority and minority groups. From semi-structured interviews in the French municipalities of La Courneuve and Ivry-sur-Seine, four theories are empirically tested: the contact theory, the halo effect, the impact of local immigrant integration policies and media influence. This study demonstrates that the implementation of municipal policies in favour of Roma integration can improve their living conditions and thus deconstruct prejudices attributable to their precarious situation. In addition, it illustrates how the media activate, maintain or solidify the way Roma are perceived.

The Roma people are one of the most unknown and interesting nations in Europe. Although they are severely marginalised within European societies, they have greatly influenced European culture. Despite this fact, there is a deep prejudice against them. In the region of East Macedonia and Thrace, a significant proportion of the population are Roma. Their marginalisation leads to many problems and also affects their mental health. Their psychopathological manifestations differ from the majority population. They express more somatic complaints and higher overall stress in a histrionic background. The main obstacles regarding their mental health issues and treatment appear to be the following: gender inequality, illiteracy and lack of cultural sensitivity in healthcare system. Although all of these obstacles must be removed, some are easier to remove than others. Cultural sensitivity could be applied by using more culturally sensitive diagnostic tools, improving overall training for mental health professionals and treating Roma wherever they seek help, because they often have a nomadic style of living. Telemedicine can be quite useful in serving this goal. Improving their educational status and addressing gender inequalities issues, on the other hand, are more difficult and long-term goals.

Irish Travellers are a traditionally nomadic ethnic minority indigenous to Ireland. Although recognized as an ethnic minority in adjacent jurisdictions, the Irish state persistently and explicitly denied recognizing Travellers’ separate ethnicity and pursued assimilationist policies designed to eradicate Travellers’ differences. However, in the late 1980s and 1990s, the state recognized the structural disadvantage and social stigma to which Travellers are subjected, naming them as a protected group in equality legislation, as well as laws addressing incitement to hatred. Through these interventions, the state afforded Travellers rights on the basis of their collective identity as Travellers, while continuing to deny their ethnicity. After sustained campaigning, Traveller ethnicity was recognized by the prime minister of Ireland in 2017. This article explores the reasoning behind, and legal significance of, that statement of recognition in Ireland.1 We outline the evidence in support of ethnic recognition as a prelude to addressing the question of whether recognition is likely to afford the community any additional rights. We conclude that this is unlikely given the protections afforded to the group prior to ethnic recognition, though we argue that recognition may give the community a firmer basis for arguing for the activation of these preexisting rights.

Since the late 1980s, the interpretations of policy toward Hungary’s minorities—most notably the country’s 1993 minority law and the minority self-governments established as part of a system of nonterritorial autonomy (NTA)—have been the subject of debates in politics and academia in at least two critical respects. Aside from the declarative character of the law, foremost has been the question of Hungary’s kin-state activism toward Hungarians abroad and the implications this has carried for domestic minority issues. A second—and related—question has concerned the extent to which cultural autonomy and minority rights are in accordance with the needs of the Roma, by far the country’s largest ethnic minority group. A growing number of scholars have accepted the argument that the minority law was enacted because of concerns regarding Hungarian minorities living in the neighboring countries. In our view, it is more appropriate to ask instead how Hungary’s kin-state policies have influenced the opportunities for domestic groups, and, in particular, how Hungary fits into the broader context of post-Communist state- and nation-building projects. This is the approach we take in this article, which aims to unpack and reconcile the complex and seemingly contradictory findings on the Hungarian case. Our conclusions are drawn from a content analysis of parliamentary debates on the minority law—something that has never previously been undertaken. This is supplemented by semi-structured interviews with former and current politicians and minority activists.

This article explores the relationship between memory, political violence, and identity among the Roma minorities in Kosovo. In the aftermath of the 1998–1999 conflict in Kosovo, countless Roma were forced to escape Albanian retaliation, accused of being Serb collaborators. Many had to resettle in enclaves near Fushë Kosovë on the outskirts of Kosovo’s capital Prishtina, others left for Serbian-controlled northern Kosovo or to neighboring countries or to Western Europe. Through an ethnographic investigation with displaced Roma families around Prishtina and in Prizren, the article examines how the communities mobilize collective memories of the violent past to adapt to a new political situation, find their place, and navigate their present within Kosovo’s social, economic, and political landscape. It shows that the past is a constant reminder of compromised loyalties toward the majority group, which in turn dictates their (non)relations. Roma voices and narratives about the violent past are not part of the dominant and official discourse; they are counter-memories, telling a story that is silenced and unrecognized by the majority.