Performance and Citizenship: The Roma in Europe

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Abstract

This chapter proposes the citizenship gap as a paradigm that connects the experiences of migrants and minorities who have legal citizenship but few de facto rights and uses a performance lens to bring scholarship on citizenship in conversation with research on migration and minorities. It argues that the concepts of performance and performativity allow us to grasp modes of citizenship that do not follow verbal, logocentric interactions and are not directly addressed to the state and state institutions and to follow the citizenship gap as it is experienced in people’s daily lives. Using an intersectional lens and ethnographic research with Roma in Romania, the chapter follows the performative and everyday iterations and enactments of citizenship among different Roma. It argues that the concepts of the public and audience in theorizations of citizenship need to be reconfigured to include Roma, other minorities, and migrants more generally, and shows how Roma artists and activists claim countercultural citizenship and belonging in a variety of media and through acts of citizenship that may otherwise be overlooked.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe Oxford Handbook of Politics and Performance
EditorsShirin Rai, Milija Gluhovic, Silvija Jestrovic, Michael Saward
Place of PublicationOxford
PublisherOxford University Press
Chapter11
Pages183-198
ISBN (Electronic)9780190863487
ISBN (Print)9780190863456
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 10 Mar 2021

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