BOSTON, MA – September 23, 2024
The François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University and the Canadian Romani Alliance published a groundbreaking study measuring both major and everyday discrimination experienced by Romani individuals in the Greater Toronto-Hamilton area (GTHA) in Canada.
This study examined previously uncounted experiences of everyday discrimination – daily experiences of ethno-racial insults, jokes, stereotype-based questioning, passive or active distancing, and incidents where Romani people are misunderstood, underestimated, overlooked, or ignored.
The research team interviewed 87 Canadians (64 Romani adults and 23 non-Romani adults), with the majority of Roma being emigrants or refugees from Central and Eastern Europe.
Key findings reveal widespread incidents of everyday discrimination. Almost all of the Romani Canadians who were interviewed experienced one or more incidents of everyday discrimination, particularly: identity misconceptions, ethno–racial insults or jokes, distancing, stereotype-based questioning.
“One Romani woman who never openly disclosed her Romani identity at work faced continuous mockery from her employer. The employer racially profiled two Romani customers based on their gold jewelry and long skirts. They also racially profiled the Romani employee who never self-identified as Romani and routinely assigned her to attend to customers of color. The employer would jest that ‘the G*psy will take care of the Asians—the foreign women.’”
The research team also examined major discrimination, including the denial of resources, differential treatment, and ethno-racial profiling in institutional and social settings; more than two-thirds of Romani respondents reported personal experiences of major discrimination. Denial of housing was the most widely reported experience of major discrimination: approximately half of respondents who were denied rental (8 out of 15) attributed the denial to their Hungarian Roma origins.
“[…]here in Toronto, it’s very difficult to get a rental when they realize that we are Hungarian Roma. They don’t want to rent properties to us. When I introduced myself, they asked about our background, and when I said Hungarian Roma, they immediately said, ‘Sorry, we are not renting you the place,” a Romani respondent stated.
The study’s findings also indicate a partial level of awareness of Romani identity in GTHA and a broader societally ingrained portrayal of Europeans as phenotypically white. In this context, physical and cultural traits, as well as racializing tropes, have been used to identify/misidentify, classify, or misrepresent Romani people. Importantly, most non-Romani interviewed by the research team did not know much about Romani history, culture, and practices.
The report reveals that the views held by non-Romani Canadian respondents towards Romani, both as individuals and as a group, align with how Romani individuals believe they are being perceived.
Gina Csanyi-Robah, Executive Director of the Canadian Romani Alliance and the study’s field research director, concludes that the dearth of scholarly work on and with Romani Canadians contributes to a vicious cycle that makes it difficult to fully and clearly understand Romani people’s place within societal structures such as education, employment, or healthcare and to analyze how their social and political exclusion is being perpetuated by dominant actors.
Read the full report:
Study Contributors:
FXB Center for Health and Human Rights: Stephanie Martinez-Fernandez, Edita Rigova, Margareta Matache, Aqil Arif Merchant, Keisha Bush, Jacqueline Bhabha
Canadian Romani Alliance: Gina Csanyi-Robah (Executive Director), Shayna Plaut (Board Member)
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The François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights (FXB Center) is a university-wide Center at Harvard University. François-Xavier, son of the Center’s founder Albina du Boisrouvray, tragically lost his life while on a helicopter rescue mission in 1986. Endowing the Center in 1993 with the support of the FXB Foundation, Albina sought to perpetuate the values, generosity, and compassion that motivated François-Xavier, who strove especially to protect children. The Center is premised on the inextricable link between health and human rights, as advanced by founding director Jonathan Mann and strongly supported by then-Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, Harvey Fineberg. The FXB Center champions the rights and dignity of every individual, with special attention to children, the most vulnerable. The FXB Center employs interdisciplinary approaches to such complex problems as poverty, forced migration, climate disruption, oppression, racism, bigotry, discrimination and inequity. By protecting fundamental human rights, the FXB Center aims ultimately to improve the physical, mental, and social well-being of individuals and populations. To learn more, please visit fxb.harvard.edu.
Harvard University’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights founded the Roma Program at Harvard in 2012. The goal of the program is multifold: to develop a body of research and methodologies that examine and give voice to topics and issues Roma people prioritize; to spotlight and amplify the voices of leading and emerging Roma scholars, organizations, activists, and leaders; to shift the field of Romani Studies away from the margins of academic interest and co-center it in social, health, and political theory and multidisciplinary, multi-thematic, and multiregional studies; and to create connections and collaborations with other communities of scholarship. The program has implemented research projects that have spearheaded two volumes and a significant corpus of peer-reviewed articles, as well as studies, commentaries, and other publications.
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The Canadian Romani Alliance is a not-for-profit, volunteer-based organization that engages in public education, advocacy, and community capacity building and works in solidarity with other equity and justice-seeking groups. The mission of the Canadian Romani Alliance is to amplify the voice of Canadian Roma and to ensure the best interests of Roma peoples throughout Canada, while raising awareness about our community and addressing challenges of exclusion, misinformation, anti- Roma discrimination, and racism.
Press Contact: Danai Macridi, danaiprado@hsph.harvard.edu
Cover art: Mary Delaware / Harvard Public Health