Resilience capacity and supportive factors of compulsory education in ethnic minority families: mixed methods study of Czech Roma mothers

ABSTRACT

This mixed methods study from 2017 to 2018 documents the living conditions and Czech Roma mothers’ experiences of the education system. Based on a comparative analysis of quantitative survey data and in-depth biographical interviews, we focus on the mothers’ reflections of macro, meso and microsystem level primary education conditions and experiences. We especially draw upon racially/ethnically framed oppression and its interrelation with modes of communication between education facilities and families, as well as educational aspirations. The negative schooling experiences of Roma mothers and their children appear to oscillate at the intersections of race, ethnicity and social class. Our findings indicate the development of resilience and coping strategies, the overriding feature of which is a mode of family damage control and prevention rather than the pursuit of ambitious prospects when assisting children through the education process. At the same time, when seeking support, Czech Roma mothers preferably turn to informal education and the private sphere, rather than the formal education sphere.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical race theory
• Czech Roma
• family-school relationship
• motherhood
• primary education
• resilience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We would like to express acknowledgements to Zuzana Szabó Lenhartová, Ladislav Zilcher, Zdeněk Svoboda and Kateřina Čanigová who conducted the Czech interviews of the ISOTIS project (EU Horizon 2020 research programme, grant number 727069). The English translation of the interview excerpts was produced by Kateřina Sidiropulu Janků.

2 The calculation was conducted by Petr Fučík.

3 In the survey conducted by ISOTIS research team, the material deprivation index for Roma families in the Czechia, Portugal as well as Greece was over the cut-off estimate, which means that according to EU guidelines these families are considered materially deprived with higher levels of deprivation (Broekhuizen et al., 2018, p. 74).

Additional information

Funding

This paper was written based at the resolution of the ISOTIS project (www.isotis.org) and funded by the European Union within the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (grant agreement No. 727069).

Notes on contributors

Jana Obrovská

Jana Obrovská, Ph.D. is assistant professor at the Department of Education, Faculty of Education, Masaryk University in Brno. The fields of her professional interests are the sociology of education and culture. She deals with minority/inclusive education and the role of social disadvantage in the educational process. Recently, she was involved in the research project ‘Educational Strategies of Migrants and Ethnic Minority Youth’ supported by the Czech Grant Agency while currently she is the principal investigator of the project ‘Ethnography of Diversity in Pre-service Teacher Education’. She specialises in qualitative methodology, especially school ethnography.

Kateřina Sidiropulu Janků

Kateřina Sidiropulu Janků, Ph.D. is a researcher at the Department of Health Management, Faculty of Sciences and Social Work, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences in Feldkirchen in Kärnten. The fields of her professional interests are qualitative methodology and research ethics, sociology of migration and interethnic relations, social memory, cultural sociology and the sociology of neighbourhood. Currently, she is leading the Erasmus+ project ‘Transnational Open Badges Platform in Early Life Family Care’. She specialises in ethnographic sociology and interethnic relations in urban settings, social marginalisation, and interdisciplinary, PAR and applied research methods.