Ethnocultural justice for the Roma in Slovakia.

摘要

The thesis aims to contribute to the scholarly effort that scrutinizes national minority rights standards in Central and Eastern Europe from an ethnocultural justice perspective. I approach this task through a case study of the Roma in Slovakia. By interrogating what ethnocultural justice for this minority means, I critique both, the current practices in the accommodation of national minorities, and Western theories of minority rights.; Drawing on several fields of study, including international law, Slovak constitutional law, political theories of liberal pluralism, feminism, and Romani studies, the thesis frames the question of Roma rights within the larger discourse on accommodation of national minorities. I advance an account of ethnocultural justice based on the concept of equality that takes into consideration the issues of context. Rather than applying a uniform framework to each group, the thesis proposes a method of devising minority protection based on reliance of the three core 'objectives' or 'justifications' of existing national minority rights; namely peace and security, human dignity, and culture. Guided by the three justifications, I put forward an interpretation of ethnocultural justice for the Roma. It is founded on a substantive equality dimension in relation to the dominant majority and to other national minorities. Equal treatment acknowledges the specific circumstances of the Roma, including socio-economic disparities, distinct culture, and territorial dispersion. Ethnocultural justice is equally sensitive to gender and other forms of inequalities within the group. In contrast to existing policies, fair treatment of the Roma reaches beyond their mere 'integration' into dominant societal institutions, but equally falls short of promoting parallel minority institutions across the whole range of political, social, and economic spaces.; In its final part, the thesis offers a variant of the personal cultural autonomy, combined with aspects of a model of joint governance called 'transformative accommodation', as an institutional expression of my normative proposal. While sanctioning the existence of some minority specific spaces, the model promises to facilitate the transformation of mainstream institutions in a way that promotes Roma inclusion in these critical in advancing both the socio-economic and the cultural structures, which is in turn critical in advancing both the socio-economic and the cultural empowerment of this group.