Interview with Angela Kocze - Research subjects should be partners and active participants
Angela Kocze is a Hungarian Roma sociologist and activist. Currently a research fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Science, she has worked as a policy maker on Roma and gender equality in the Hungarian Government, as a founding director of the European Roma Information Office in Brussels and as director of the human rights education programme at the European Roma Rights Centre in Budapest. She shared her views on the margins of the OSCE expert roundtable “Women as Agents of Change” in Vienna on 6 and 7 September 2012, where she was an invited speaker.
OSCE Magazine: You are a sociologist, a university teacher, a policy maker. What drives you to work for the cause of Roma and Roma women?
Angela Kocze: I think it was very much given in my life, because you can chose many things in your life, but you cannot chose your family. I was born in a Roma settlement in Kispalád, a little village of 500 people in an underdeveloped area of eastern Hungary. My father had two years of elementary school, my mother had four; basically both were illiterate. I always had a kind of inner drive telling me I wanted to do something different. I think what really sparked my spirit was the trust I got from my family and from my elementary school teachers as well. I finished secondary school, but I didn’t have the courage right away to apply to a university. I went to Budapest and got a job in the heavy metal industry, doing some menial work and administrative assistance. Then I started attending teacher training college, and afterward I went to the university to study sociology. Later, I studied human rights at the Central European University. At that time, I was already working for a Romani NGO.
How have things changed for the Roma since you were a child?
I think that there has been a paradoxical development. In terms of legislation and policy one has the feeling that things are getting better, but one can’t really say that the situation has improved for the people living at the grassroots level. The change in the political system after 1989 was definitely a positive one insofar as it gave us freedom and rights. But meanwhile, people were not able to use their rights because basically they did not have the means. Many people lost their jobs and fell out of the social system, so that their material situation has become much worse than it was during Socialism. That is why I think that not only in Hungary but also in other South-Eastern and Central European countries, particularly in the rural areas, people have a strong nostalgia for the old times.
For example, all the members of my family have been unemployed for ages. They had jobs in the late 1980s and early 1990s and from then on they haven’t had a job. Not because they haven’t tried, but because they are living in an area where people are completely outside of the market system. And now, as we experience the dark side of the economic crisis, anti-Gypsy rhetoric is becoming really harsh and is shattering many people’s lives at the local level.
What needs to be done to decrease Roma segregation and what can Roma women do?
Segregation cannot be overcome through any one factor alone, such as education. All kinds of different policies are needed, a housing policy, an employment policy, and also education and health policies. Roma women can certainly play a leadership role in their local communities and they can build bridges between Roma and non-Roma. But I think it is unrealistic to see them as major “agents of change”. They can make small steps, but to change the system structurally, you need people in powerful positions. People who can ensure, for instance, that money earmarked for Roma integration policies actually reaches the communities that need it most.
How have you used your own research to benefit Roma communities?
In 2009 and 2010, I did a research project in two micro-regions in Hungary, the Szikszo' and the Monor' regions, in which I compared the social and economic status of Romani women with non-Romani women from same social class. I used the results for my doctoral dissertation, but I also made them available to the community members to use as an advocacy tool. Being a Romani activist, I have always felt that my research methods should be a reflection of my philosophy, which is to consider the research subject as a partner who can be an active participant in the project. The research results are a help for the community members because they give them the language they need to express their experiential knowledge in an official way, which can be used to apply for EU funding, for instance.
Often, money that is meant for Roma inclusion doesn’t reach the communities that are most in need because the NGOs that are in place in these communities do not fulfil required criteria. Being able to refer to the results of a study as background documentation is an important element of writing a grant application.
This seminar has been about women, their problems and their potential as agents of change. What about Roma men?
Many young Roma men, especially those living in segregated areas, are in huge trouble. They have no money, no opportunities in their lives, and naturally they are likely to turn to all kinds of illegal stuff, anything that can give them any kind of hope and perspective. One interesting thing about the current macroeconomic shift is that many multinational companies are more willing to give low-level jobs to Roma women than to men. When you see cleaning personnel in a shopping centre, for instance, they are mostly women. So I think that men are really in a horrible situation. And the frustration that they are experiencing every day can spark tensions inside their families and inside their micro-communities. These are things we need to understand, also from a social and a psychological perspective.
For further reading:
Missing Intersectionality: Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Class in Current Research and Policies on Romani Women in Europe by Angela Kóczé with contribution from Raluca Maria Popa, Policy Papers, Central European University (CEU) Center for Policy Studies, CEU Press, 2009
“Pro-Roma global civil society: acting for, with or instead of Roma?” by Angela Kóczé and Martin Rövid, in Mary Kaldor, Henrietta L. Moore and Sabine Selchow (eds.), Global Civil Society 2012: Ten Years of Critical Reflection, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 110-122.