Breaking secular endogamy. The growth of intermarriage among the Gitanos/Calé of Spain (1900–2006)

ABSTRACT

For over five centuries the Gitanos/Calé of Spain have shown a marked preference for marrying within their ethnocultural community. In the last decades, however, various Gitano groups have experienced a rise in intermarriage that is transforming their families, their identities and their interactions with mainstream society. This paper analyzes this historical transformation in an area of Andalusia that shows some of the highest concentrations of Romani people in Western Europe. Ethnographic and historical-demographic research allowed the reconstitution of 3,336 Gitano families formed from 1900 to 2006. Of these 421 (12,6%) were mixed. This rate increased to over 25% in the 2000s, and in some localities about half of the recent Gitano marriages were mixed. Three major findings emerge from this case study. Firstly, the local environment plays a key role in intermarriage. Local history generated different intercultural environments and relationships in adjacent municipalities, leading to diverse levels of intermarriage. Secondly, more Gitanas are marrying non-Gitano men than vice versa. Since 1990 Gitanas made 60% of all mixed unions. Thirdly, Gitanas in mixed marriages tend to marry later and to have fewer children than those in endogamous unions. Thus, these women may have been trailblazers in the fertility transitions of Gitano women. The paper hypothesizes that the incorporation of the Gitano/Calé people into the institutions of the Welfare State has favored interactions across ethnic boundaries, reduced social distance, and facilitated intermarriage. The upward mobility of some Gitano families may be turning socioeconomic and educational homogamy against ethnic endogamy.

KEYWORDS:

• Intermarriage
• Roma/Gitanos
• Spain
• gender
• historical-demography
• ethnography
• ethnicity

Acknowledgment

Elisa Martín Carrasco-Muñoz, a historian–demographer who died in 2009, lead the family and genealogical reconstitutions upon which this paper is based. She must be considered a co-author of any work deriving from this database. Mercedes Alba Maza, Mari Luz Flores Antiguedad, F. Antonio González Navarrete, and Alejandro Quesada Garrido also contributed to the archival research in civil and parish registries. Jesús Martín helped with the map. Angel Heredia Amador has provided important advice over the years, and dozens of Gitano friends in the study area shared their views and experiences with us, something for which we will always be grateful. Antonio Espín, Tom Acton and two anonymous reviewers read prior versions of this paper and made important suggestions. The authors, however, are responsible for the shortcomings of the paper and the views expressed here.

Disclosure statement

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

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2022.2159852

Correction Statement

WoS Researcher ID: AAH-9293-2020

WoS ResearcherID: J-1806-2017

Scopus Author ID: 57,191,108,134

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. In aggregate terms, however, since the 1970s mixed marriages appear to have evolved in the opposite direction to consanguineous marriages (see Supplementary Table S1 and Figure S1).

2. The term castellano nuevo mimics the cristiano nuevo label used for descendants of Jewish or Muslim converts. Gitanos were assumed to be Christians in their past, but they became vecinos or naturales of the dominant Spanish kingdom, Castile.

3. Who counts as Roma and who does the counting is a hot question in Romani studies, particularly in biomedical and genetic research (Lipphardt et al., 2021; Surdu, 2016). However, the need for identification and counting are also decisive for political representation and for policy design and evaluation.

4. The fertility transition of Spanish Gitanas and its idiosyncratic calendar can be observed in these two tables in a form that was never documented before.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the CONSEJERIA DE ECONOMIA, INNOVACIÓN Y CIENCIA, Junta de Andalucía, Proyecto de Excelencia P11.SEJ.8286.