How to Empower Gypsies: An Ethnographic Study

Elisabetta Di Giovanni

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How to Empower Gypsies: An Ethnographic Study

In: Boundaries: Dichotomies of Keeping in and Keeping Out

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Elisabetta Di Giovanni

Elisabetta Di Giovanni
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 93–102

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9781848880214_009

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The work focuses on the case of the nomad camp of Palermo, in southern Italy, where three groups of ‘Gypsies’ have been living for twenty-five years, in ghetto-like conditions. This camp represents a world outside the city, or rather a confined microcosm, with, except for volunteer workers, sporadic contact with the people of the city or the public administration. This means that there is no inter-relationship between the camp and the outside world. On the contrary, for the so-called host society, the three different groups represent a sort of generic and nebulous whole, cut off in a green area, surrounded by a high wall. Not seeing them means not caring about them, their living conditions, their culture and their identity. The only interaction between ‘them’ and ‘us’ happens when the Romanì women leave the camp every morning and walk the city streets; children wander about alone, begging for food; little boys are disguised as girls in order to make passers-by feel sorry for them and so forth. On the other hand, younger Gypsies prefer traffic lights as a place to beg for money. It is widely acknowledged that in the minds of local people there is widespread ethnocentric prejudice, especially in terms of marginality and xenophobia. Local inhabitants tend to assume that their western, urban space is being invaded by this unpleasant microcosm, which really ought to stay within its own boundaries. Within this ethnic framework, I would like to suggest social intervention through the empowerment approach described by Montero, and ‘street level bureaucracy’1 in order to create an initial social security cushion on the long road towards social inclusion.

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Boundaries: Dichotomies of Keeping in and Keeping Out

E-Book ISBN:: 9781848880214

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 29 Apr 2010

Subjects
- Philosophy
  - General
- Social Sciences
  - Cultural Studies

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How to Empower Gypsies: An Ethnographic Study

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Boundaries: Dichotomies of Keeping in and Keeping Out

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