Realizing Roma Rights investigates anti-Roma racism and documents a growing Roma-led political movement engaged in building a more inclusive and just Europe. The book brings to the forefront voices of leading and emerging Romani scholars, from established human rights experts to policy and advocacy leaders with deep experience.
Realizing Roma Rights offers detailed accounts of anti-Roma racism, political and diplomatic narratives chronicling the development of European and American policy, and critical examination of Roma-related discourse and policies in contemporary Europe. It also investigates the complex role of the European Union as a driver of progressive change and a flawed implementer of fundamental rights.
This book will provide a useful source for those interested in the dynamics of contemporary stigma and discrimination, the enduring challenges of mobilizing within severely disempowered communities, and the complexities of regional and transnational human rights mechanisms. Spanning as it does a broad disciplinary range that encompasses law, history, sociology, political theory, critical race theory, human rights, organization theory, and education, Realizing Roma Rights is a useful teaching tool for interdisciplinary courses on human rights, racism and xenophobia, political theory, European studies, and minority issues.
Contributors: Jacqueline Bhabha, James A. Goldston, Will Guy, Fernando Macías, David Mark, Teresa Sordé-Martí, Margareta Matache, David Meyer, Andrzej Mirga, Kálmán Mizsei, Krista Oehlke, Alexandra Oprea, Elena Rozzi, Erika Schlager, Michael Uyehara, Peter Vermeersch.
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Praise for Realizing Roma Rights
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"Roma history includes accounts of terrible discrimination but must also pay attention to the development of an admirably courageous global community-beautifully combining resistance to imposed disadvantage with instinctive tolerance of different ways of life of others. This splendid collection of essays brings out the richness of the Roma story-what the world owes to this massively disadvantaged group, and, no less important, what the world has to learn from the global culture of this locally defiant community spread across the world."
- Amartya Sen, Harvard University
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"By juxtaposing European and American Roma experiences, Realizing Roma Rights demonstrates that Roma cannot fight racism and discrimination without strategic allies in both their countries of origin and their adopted homelands and makes clear the need to develop Roma networks that can advocate for human and legal rights in their communities. Anyone working toward achieving rights for Roma, especially those working in European and international commissions, as well as non-governmental organizations, would benefit from reading this book."
- Romani Rose, Chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma
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Reviews for Realizing Roma Rights
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Andrew Moravcsik
​Foreign Affairs
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Critical Romani Studies
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Johns Hopkins University Press
Volume 40, Number 3, August 2018
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