Roma Identities and the Reproduction of Inequalities in Bulgaria: Kinship, Gender and the State

This multi-sited ethnographic study is about the ‘unfinished’ identification, the singularity of experience and Roma ‘becoming’ in Bulgaria. By presenting a singularity of individual trajectories, voices and specific circumstance, the work explores Roma lives from ‘unexpected’ standpoints. The ‘unexpected’ and contradictory nature of the minutue of everyday lives manifests across different arenas from history, kinship and childhood to activism and conversion to Evangelism. The core idea of the thesis is that Roma identification can be intricate and at times problematic alongside, through, and despite of the constraining circumstantial external and internal structures and forces, including those of state and ‘community’. Following this logic, the overarching questions posed by the thesis are: What are the principles and behaviours that contradict ‘Roma-ness’ and community belonging? What are the exceptions to the ‘expected’ and how are these dealt with and navigated by the research interlocutors? The aim of this work is to paint a complex picture and to create episodes which do not necessarily make ‘one whole’ of a linear account, in order to illustrate the uneven nature of inequality and identification; and to give an account of the ways the individuals in the multi-sited field confront, negotiate and reproduce understandings and demands that are often conflicting and ambiguous. The research employs a self-reflexive approach to the material which is carried across chapter to chapter.