Power, Gender, and Ethnic Spaces: Geographies of Power in Roma Communities

摘要

This study examines the inextricable (and understudied) link between ethnicity, gender, power, and space, to assess how gender and power relations operate in, and mark, the ethnic spaces of one community of Roma in Romania. Drawing from ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews with Romani women who work as health mediators, this article identifies and theorizes the negotiated meanings that arise among the mediators' roles and spaces. I argue that perceptions of the mediators' power roles change between institutional landscapes (spaces of hegemonic directives), Romani communities (conceived space where the women have symbolic control), and the lived space of resistance and internalized discrimination; the latter is both an active constituent of, and a challenge to, racism against the Roma.