Preliminary Programme

Wed 12 April
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    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Thu 13 April
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    14.00 - 16.00
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Fri 14 April
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    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Sat 15 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00

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Saturday 15 April 2023 14.00 - 16.00
R-15 POL19 Ethnicity, Identity Politics and Social Movements. A History of Transnational Encounters in the XXth Century
E45
Network: Politics, Citizenship, and Nations Chair: Ivan Kosnica
Organizer: Carolina García Sanz Discussants: -
Begoña Barrera : Tsiganes and Tsiganologues. The “Civilizing Project” and the Emergence of the Roma Movement in Postwar France
This paper analyses the so-called “Tsigane question” in post-World War II France. It seeks to confront the two most important definitions and projects that were developed during this period: on the one hand, that of the official powers (government and public institutions in partnership with private organizations), which regarded the ... (Show more)
This paper analyses the so-called “Tsigane question” in post-World War II France. It seeks to confront the two most important definitions and projects that were developed during this period: on the one hand, that of the official powers (government and public institutions in partnership with private organizations), which regarded the Tsiganes as a population at a lower state of civilization and, accordingly, saw themselves as knowledgeable “experts”, “friends” and tutors of the Tsiganes, in their process of integration into mainstream society; on the other hand, that of the Romani movement, which gathered together representatives of individuals who considered themselves as Tsiganes and offered a response to the paternalism of the so-called “experts” and “friends”. To this purpose, this paper draws on a variety of press sources and official archives. The conclusions argue that, contrary to the dichotomous and simplistic interpretation that the literature has given to the nature and the connection between the public authorities and the Romani movement, the contact between them involved tensions, conflicts and approaches that enhanced the plurality of both actors. (Show less)

Carolina García Sanz : Romani Struggle for Recognition and the Red Power Movement in 20th Century Canadian History
In the twentieth century, the fight for equitable power relations between the French-speaking community of Quebec and the Anglo-Saxon society would shadow the participation of other Canadian minorities in the negotiation that opened up about the logics of domination of public space. This would have happened to the approximately twenty-five ... (Show more)
In the twentieth century, the fight for equitable power relations between the French-speaking community of Quebec and the Anglo-Saxon society would shadow the participation of other Canadian minorities in the negotiation that opened up about the logics of domination of public space. This would have happened to the approximately twenty-five thousand Romanies who were subject to cultural stereotyping, if not outright demonization, by other Canadians in the explosive and revolutionary context of the 1960s. The collective imaginary was then marked by committed militancy on behalf of civil rights, radical movements of the Left influenced by the Black Power Movement, and the eruption of violence on the political stage with the Front de libération du Québec. Viewed as an eccentric in that fight, Roma people carried the extra burden that assigned them second-class status. The common perception of them in majority society was that they were an immigrant group in contrast to other marginalized groups like the indigenous peoples (First Nations). However, Romani groups had arrived in Canadian territories even before the British North America Act (1867). But very few remembered the valuable relationships established at that time between Roma and non-Roma families through activities such as midwifery, natural medicine or horse-trading with indigenous people.
This paper seeks to explore different Romani life stories and their ways of representing rebellion against ethnic inner limits of Canadian nation state, addressing ideological, social and institutional aspects. Secondly, it will assess the degree to which Romani activists resisted a racial account of the nation which, like the ‘first’ or aboriginal Canadians did, would completely explode the Canadian self-image of a multicultural society in the twentieth century. This specific case study approaches us to least known civil engagements shaped against the Canadian counter-cultural backdrop. The conclusions not only reveal the silenced history of the Romani agency to survive extreme marginalization but also their valuable contribution to transforming political and social environments finding strategic allies against the so-called ‘white Canadization’. (Show less)

Jennifer Illuzzi : The Catholic Church and Italian Romanies after World War II
After WWII in Italy, a growing movement within the Catholic Church sought to reach out to Romani communities, particularly following the conversion efforts of La Vie et Lumière, an evangelical group that began in France in 1954. I focus on how the Women’s Union of Catholic Action encountered the contradictions ... (Show more)
After WWII in Italy, a growing movement within the Catholic Church sought to reach out to Romani communities, particularly following the conversion efforts of La Vie et Lumière, an evangelical group that began in France in 1954. I focus on how the Women’s Union of Catholic Action encountered the contradictions and tensions of Catholic ‘modernity’ in their work with Romani populations. The women working within the Catholic hierarchy found themselves both doing what they considered to be ‘charitable’ work on the ground converting ‘nomadic’ communities, while butting heads with the patriarchal power structures within the Catholic Church. The evangelizing project, also described in the Lacio Drom journal, founded by Fr. Nicolini and Mirella Karpati in 1965, traces the limits of what Hannah Arendt terms ‘representative thinking’. While the approach allowed those engaging with the Italian Romani community to try to understand their situation from within, it also led to paternalism, since it encouraged the dominant groups to assume they could understand the needs of those they served without really engaging them in deep, meaningful ways. The long-term repercussions of this approach have been clear in the Catholic Church’s continuing struggles to meaningfully engage with Italian and European Romani communities. (Show less)

María Sierra Alonso : ‘We Roms’: a Case Study of Holocaust Memory, Ethnic Identity and Political Provocation in the Post-World War II
The Dutch writer Nico Rost was one of the earliest promoters of the public memory of the Holocaust. Political prisoner who survived Dachau, he conceived of his duty to the fallen comrades as a fight against the oblivion of their lives and deaths (Goethe in Dachau). In 1963 he met ... (Show more)
The Dutch writer Nico Rost was one of the earliest promoters of the public memory of the Holocaust. Political prisoner who survived Dachau, he conceived of his duty to the fallen comrades as a fight against the oblivion of their lives and deaths (Goethe in Dachau). In 1963 he met in Paris Ionel Rotaru, a Romanian refugee who founded the Communauté Mondiale Gitane and was a pioneer in the recognition of the Roma genocide. His initiatives moved Rost to write about the mistreatment of the Roma as second-class victims of the Holocaust and to stand up for their rights. Through their conversation, we can go into the political project developed by Rotaru looking to open a transnational space that would guarantee the civic existence and rights of the Roma in post-Nazi Europe. He resignified the idea of Romanestan with both the experience of the genocide during the war and the experience of the persistent anti-Gypsyism in the 1960s-70s. His legacy, besides being considered in relation to the following international Romani movement, allows us to think about the value of political imagination in the construction of Romani modern ethnic identity. (Show less)

Rocío Velasco de Castro : Embracing Moroccan Otherness? Representations of Moorish Identity in Spanish Colonial Ideology
The main objective of this proposal is to analyze the discourses and identity representations generated around the "Moor" during the Moroccan protectorate and its relationship with the Spanish identity itself. The starting hypothesis is that the protectorate consolidated an ambivalent vision of the "Moor" that oscillates between otherness and brotherhood, ... (Show more)
The main objective of this proposal is to analyze the discourses and identity representations generated around the "Moor" during the Moroccan protectorate and its relationship with the Spanish identity itself. The starting hypothesis is that the protectorate consolidated an ambivalent vision of the "Moor" that oscillates between otherness and brotherhood, both understood in terms of subalternity, as is characteristic in the perception of the colonized subject. To this end, the different visual and textual representations of Moroccan men and women are addressed in the illustrated weekly magazine "Vida Marroquí". Many of the identity traits attributed to these "Moors" survive in the current Spanish collective imagination. (Show less)



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