Attitudes to the language and identity of Romanian Roma migrants in a UK school setting

ABSTRACT

Drawing on participant observation, interviews, and document analysis, we discuss teachers’ narratives about the language and identity of Roma pupils and compare them with those of the pupils themselves. We explore the sources of information that shape teachers’ dispositions, category conflation (of Roma with ‘Gypsies/Travellers’) and lack of information on sociolinguistic repertoires. We discuss the risks of targeted, scripted institutional narratives on Roma and show that in the case under consideration they are likely to have contributed to a disparity between teachers’ perception of Roma, and the views that Roma pupils present drawing on their own experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Romanian Roma
• Gypsies
• migrants
• Romani language
• sociolinguistics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Numerous studies address attainment and integration issues of the population known as ‘Gypsies and Travellers’ in the UK. Since our focus is on the population that speak the Romani language, and the particular issues of language barriers and awareness of language and identity, we do not refer to studies on non-Romani populations (but see below for the tendency to associate Roma with ‘Gypsies/Travellers’.

2. The names have been altered.

3. http://migrom.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/.

4. Lifelong Learning Programme Key Activity 1 Compendium 2011, p. 4–5: http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/llp/results_projects/documents/roma_compendium_en.pdf. Last accessed 06/08/2017.

5. Ciara Leeming, ’The new Mancunians’, TES Magazine from 01.04.2011.

Additional information

Funding

The research leading to the present publication results from MIGROM, ‘The immigration of Romanian Roma to Western Europe: Causes, effects and future engagement strategies’, a project funded by the European Union’s 7th Framework Programme under the call on ‘Dealing with diversity and cohesion: the case of the Roma in the European Union’ [GA319901].

Notes on contributors

Yaron Matras

Yaron Matras is Professor of Linguistics at the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at the University of Manchester. His areas of research specialisation are contact linguistics, minority languages, languages of the Middle East, and language documentation. He has published widely on Romani language and culture and was Editor of the journal Romani Studies from 1999–2017.

Gerry Howley

Gerry Howley is research examines the acquisition of Manchester English dialect features by adolescent Roma migrants. She is currently a Teaching Associate in Sociolinguistics at the University of Sheffield.

Charlotte Jones

Charlotte Jones has worked on numerous research projects on the Romani language at the University of Manchester. She also taught at a school with many Roma migrants and led on issues of language. She has an MA in language education.