Wegbereiders: Roma en Sinti in Nederland en Tsjechië over het profijt van onderwijs, 1950-2020

Doctoral Thesis

Most European Roma and Sinti achieve such low levels of education that they have basically no chance of moving up the social ladder. This study compares the educational positions of Roma and Sinti in the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, based on more than fifty biographical interviews with Roma and Sinti.
Compared to the Netherlands, the poverty and social segregation among Czech Roma is more severe. Discrimination and racism against Czech Roma are virulent and ubiquitous. Yet, Roma and Sinti in the Netherlands have developed a similar suspicion of people outside their own circle and a similar negative attitude towards education, in response to their common history of deprivation, expulsion and even twice a genocide, in the eighteenth century and in the Second World War.
Those Roma and Sinti who did receive an education were no longer seen as Roma or Sinti. This is why the highly educated did not function as role models until recently. Yet, this study shows there is a...Show moreMost European Roma and Sinti achieve such low levels of education that they have basically no chance of moving up the social ladder. This study compares the educational positions of Roma and Sinti in the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, based on more than fifty biographical interviews with Roma and Sinti.
Compared to the Netherlands, the poverty and social segregation among Czech Roma is more severe. Discrimination and racism against Czech Roma are virulent and ubiquitous. Yet, Roma and Sinti in the Netherlands have developed a similar suspicion of people outside their own circle and a similar negative attitude towards education, in response to their common history of deprivation, expulsion and even twice a genocide, in the eighteenth century and in the Second World War.
Those Roma and Sinti who did receive an education were no longer seen as Roma or Sinti. This is why the highly educated did not function as role models until recently. Yet, this study shows there is a cautious turnaround. In both countries, the Roma and Sinti parents of the young generation of highly educated people, often low-educated themselves, had come to regard better education as the only way towards a better life.
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Roma and Sinti

The Netherlands