Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Gypsy work— gadjo work

2005; Liverpool University Press; Volume: 15; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3828/rs.2005.2

1757-2274

Kata Horváth,

Romani and Gypsy Studies

Approached from a variety of viewpoints, the issue of work often plays a central role in any discourse concerning the Gypsies. Common public stereotypes (claiming that the Gypsies are lazy, that they do not like to or want to work, that they make a living out of thievery) just as ethnographic works (describing their traditional professions) or the sociological literature (which likes to focus on workplace segregation, on their ejection into the informal sector, etc.) regularly deal with the issue of 'Gypsy work'.Naturally, this is also a key topic within anthropological literature (perhaps because one of the goals of anthropology has always been to challenge external opinions via internal ones) thus often raising the question whether the resistance towards paid work should be seen as a Gypsy specificity. According to this view, paid work belongs to the gadjo world, therefore partaking in it might lead to the loss of Gypsy identity. In this article I would like to explicate this view, at times refuting it ...