NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
Gypsy People in Europe Throughout history Gypsy people have been seen as outcasts from mainstream society. It seems that nothing has changed. We have still not learnt to be tolerant of those whose lifestyles are different to our own. For many centuries Gypsies have been romanticized and reviled. Their traditional lifestyle seems to attract and repel the popular imagination in equal measure -- witness the number of travelers or holiday caravans who seek to imitate their traditional way of life each summer or the popularity of the music of the Gypsy Kings. Compare this with the angst easily whipped up by press reports of Gypsy scroungers, anti-social travelers or aggressive Gypsy beggars.
As outsiders Gypsy relationships with the non-Gypsy world never have been easy, but in the last decade or so, old prejudices and fears have risen to the surface once more. Who are the Roma? Non-Gypsies, known as Gorgio or Game by Roma, usually identify the Roma by their nomadic traditions and marginal lifestyle rather than as a distinct ethnic group. The majority of Roma however, particularly in east Europe, now lead settled lives. Roma share a common biological and cultural heritage; and many speak, or spoke, a form of Romani, an Indo-European language, or a dialect of the local language with extensive Romani borrowings. The early history of the Roma is unclear, although comparisons between the Romani language and Indian dialects suggest that they left their homeland in northwest India in a series of migrations, moving westwards through Iran and Asia Minor, sometime before the 9 th century.
By the 14 th century they were well established in the Balkans, which have remained their heartland. The total European population is variously estimated at between eight and 12 million, with around 12, 600 families in England and Wales. After their arrival in Europe, tolerance of the Roma soon turned to antagonism as successive countries passed anti-Gypsy legislation. Despite such suppression Europe's Gypsies fulfilled valuable economic roles in medieval and early-modern societies. They were also hired as soldiers by feudal lords. Their lifestyle influenced national folk culture, particularly popular music, dance and storytelling, in countries as distant as Russia, Spain and Scotland.
One Roma legend refers to their descent from the Pharaohs, or Egyptians, a story which probably gave them the name Gypsies. Roma live in a world largely closed to outsiders such that there is little socialization between Roma and Gorgio. According to Ian Hancock, Professor of Romany Studies at the University of Texas, Roma culture is exclusive and retains many Asian, particularly Indian, characteristics. Close contact with non-Gypsies is seen as potentially polluting, a concept that may derive from their Hindu origins. Because of their migratory nature, their absence in official census returns, and their popular classification with other nomadic groups, estimates of the total world Roma population range from two million to five million.
No significant statistical picture can be gained from the sporadic reporting in different countries. Most Roma were still in Europe in the late 20 th century, especially in the Slavic-speaking lands of central Europe and the Balkans. Large numbers live in the Czech and Slovak republics, Hungary, Yugoslavia and neighboring countries, Bulgaria, and Romania. Nowhere is this truer than in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Since the collapse of the communist bloc, combined with the effects of war and the break-up of the former Yugoslavia, Gypsies have been subjected to increased harassment, discrimination and racially-motivated violence.
As a result and partly encouraged by Czech TV programs giving glowing accounts about generous welfare programs in Britain and Canada, successive waves of Roma have left Eastern Europe for the West in the last few years. In general their requests for asylum are rejected on the grounds that they are simply economic migrants. Experts are of the opinion that the Gypsies originated from central India, from where they had been forced to emigrate in several great waves. These experts look to the Gypsies old homeland of India to discover the roots of the anthropological, linguistic, and socio-cultural differences that characterize the main ethnic subgroups of the present European Gypsy communities. Most of the Gypsies, after their arrival in Europe, lived isolated from the majority of the population in reclusive, clan-based communities. For a long time they preserved their traditional ways of life, the rituals related to their life, and the myths that told of their origins and conceptions of life.
Being faithful to these traditions ensured the survival of individual communities as well as the whole ethnic group. During the twentieth century, under the impact of industrial society and the political developments in the communist part of Europe, there began a rapid destruction and loss of the Gypsies original ethnic cult rural system, with its traditional habits and a wealth of original verbal art. This destruction has been particularly prominent among the majority of the settled Gypsies. Researchers in present European Romany literature, using fragmentary historical records and studies of the development of Gypsy dialects, are looking for the roots of the Gypsies as an ethnic group, and for the routes their waves of migration might have taken. They pay great attention to the traditional habits and the socio-cultural systems of the Gypsy communities and compare these with the ways of life of past and present populations in India. Even though there has been a tradition of collecting Gypsy oral folk art in Europe since the second half of the nineteenth century, no in-depth study has been made so far that compares the Gypsy narratives with the mythologies of those nations with which the Gypsies had come into contact during their long migrations.
The traditional culture of the individual subgroups among the Gypsy population has mainly been upheld through oral tradition. Some items of this tradition were recorded and published already during the nineteenth century, but only during the last few years have ethnologists begun to attempt a more thorough analysis of the diversity of these forms of tradition. In the following, one item of this tradition will be introduced: a text whose source is not well known among specialists. It is an authentic and rare document written by the teacher Rudolf Daniel, who was one of the first academic Gypsies in Moravia to write about his people. In the manuscript, which carries the somewhat poetic title House a Kun (Violin and Horse); he describes in detail the history, the customs, and ways of life of his predecessors and contemporaries in order to preserve knowledge of them for future generations.
The sources that Daniel uses for the text are his own personal experiences, narratives of his relatives and friends, and published literature that was available at the time of his writing (circa 1955). Among other items, he recorded very old myths that were believed to have disappeared from the memory of most Czech and Slovakian Gypsies in the second half of the twentieth century. For specialists in Romany studies, this part of Daniels record is particularly interesting because it indicates that many of the Gypsies oldest oral traditions that were recorded and analyzed in texts were actually preserved in the peoples minds for a rather long period, and survived throughout a much wider territory than what the majority of experts have hitherto assumed. The estimates concerning the size of the Roma population vary very widely. In Romania the number of the Roma is estimated to be between 2 and 15 per cent of the whole population, 2 per cent being the finding of the latest census.
The numbers are strongly influenced by the interests of those making the estimate as well as by the fact that the Roma tend to hide their identity (especially in the case of official statistics) in the face of all the prejudice. Hypothetically, the gap between the different estimates will be the widest in those societies where the anti-Roma sentiments are very strong and the Roma have created an efficient pressure group In Europe, Gypsies, or Roma as many prefer to be called, were subject to strict assimilation policies but now suffer economic exclusion with more than 60 per cent unemployment in some countries. Worst of all is the case of the Kosovar Roma, where many former miners or taxi drivers were targeted by Serb police as Albanians during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. After the crisis, returning Albanians accused the Roma of collaboration with Serb forces. Several thousand Roma, facing an uncertain future, still live in Macedonian camps under police protection. In the Czech Republic, the alleged victimization of Roma grabbed the international headlines in 1998 when the town council of Us nad Label built a high wall separating a Roma housing estate from its neighbors.
The town of Plzen also proposed surrounding a gypsy apartment block with barbed wire. Following pressure from the European Community and central government, the wall was subsequently demolished, although its brief existence underlined local animosities. Under communism most gypsies had a steady income and a welfare safety net. By turning Roma into wage labor, former communist countries largely succeeded in eliminating what remained of their nomadic past.
Now, however, few are able to compete in the employment market, forcing many to turn to petty crime, begging and prostitution, and, as a consequence, reinforcing a negative stereotype. During the decades of state-socialism the ruling Communist parties claimed that it was the duty of the state to take care of those groups who, as a result of capitalist exploitation in the past, were found to live in social and cultural backwardness. This definition fitted the Roma minority. The ambitious goal of all ruling Communist parties in the Socialist camp was to modernize and change the life of these backward groups and to make them equal to the developed ones in 10 - 20 years. Serious efforts were made to improve levels of education and qualification.
Special classes for adult education were opened for young illiterate Roma, and the education for all children became compulsory first for an eight-year period and then also for the duration of secondary education. Parents were punished for their childrens truancy with fines or compulsory labor. The school was seen as the main socialization agent, tasked to erase any differences among children from different ethnic and religious communities and to transform them into 'builders of the new socialist system. Favorable conditions were created for decreasing the rate of unemployment in the Roma community. The share of Roma employed in the agricultural cooperatives, state-owned farms, and industrial enterprises increased.
The socioeconomic status and living conditions of Roma gradually improved. The tools and the outcomes vary. Bulgaria adopted a strategy of strict repression in the 1950 s, involving the sedentarization of nomadic groups, closing down the Gypsy theatre and papers, banning the use of Romani and other expressions of ethnic identity. In Romania, the measures were similar but the state failed to enforce them, so they had a far smaller impact.
By the 1970 s the whole Roma issue in Romania lost much of the interest it had provoked earlier, as the question of ethnic Hungarians took its place in public consciousness, since Hungarians proved to be more effective in articulating their needs. Hungary was also aiming at assimilation of Roma, apart from a short period between 1958 and 1961. Assimilation, however, was meant to be achieved mostly through social and political measures. There is not much variance in media representation of the Roma in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Despite the many differences between these countries, public opinion on the Roma minority in these countries is strikingly similar.
In the newspapers one can often find articles on Roma, aimed at increasing the fears of the general public about this community. The illusory correlation between Roma ethnicity and delinquency has been frequently implied in the criminal reports. The presence of begging Roma and of homeless Roma children sniffing glue on the streets has strengthened the stereotypes that Roma are socially disembodied. In spite of the extreme heterogeneity of the Roma community and of marked individual differences, the majority population has continued to perceive Gypsies as a highly homogeneous, depersonalized mass, whose members collectively can be characterized by illiteracy, lack of work discipline, and lack of respect for legal and social norms. Roma reactions to these harsh measures, designed for rapid change in lifestyle and for quick integration into society, were ambivalent. Many of the Roma people used all the possibilities and privileges to acquire a better education.
They had to pay for their educational and subsequent social successes with the loss of their ethnic identity and were forced to leave their communities. The majority of Roma submitted to external political pressure and let their children go to school. Most Roma parents looked at their children's school education as a bargain. The state gave free education, free teaching materials, often free meals and clothing; full care for their children. Thus, parents agreed to let their children attend school. The families accepted these conditions, yet they did not include education and academic knowledge in their value system.
Any time when something important happened (taking care of younger children in the family, visiting relatives, emergence of some temporary job) the children were not sent to school. Infrequency of class attendance, along with lack of command of the official language and the low value of education, were among the main reasons for the lack of success in educating Roma. Another very important reason for the lower level of Roma education was the failure of the state to provide adequate pre-school education for all Roma children and their refusal to use Romani as a mediator. Linguistic problems, including the problem of socio-linguistic codes, were neglected completely. As a result, Roma children were often classified as retarded, and put in so-called special schools for mentally disabled students. In the last few years, dozens of Czech Roma have been killed in attacks by skinhead and other racist groups.
Many more have been injured. They have become the scapegoats of a rapidly changing society and, though they may have lived in the country for centuries, are seen as outsiders with no place to call home. Indeed, many Czech Roma were denied citizenship of the new republic under the 1993 Citizenship Law. The reaction of some Roma activists, such as Emil Scuba, general secretary of the International Romany Union (IRU), is to assert their rights to be Czech. Others, often the less educated, believe they have no place in the country.
Rejection and discrimination encourages migration, something the...
Free research essays on topics related to: socio cultural, twentieth century, ethnic identity, ways of life, nineteenth century
Research essay sample on Ways Of Life Socio Cultural
