Abstract
The complexity of conducting community-based participatory research (CBPR) at a small Romani organization is described through montage. Articulating with a desire for social change and the correction of the multiple injustices meted out to those who identify as Roma, CBPR commends collaborative research with a community. However, the researcher found herself not only working with the community but also doing work for them and about them—activities that do not sit comfortably with the CBPR approach. The researcher’s disparate roles are presented as vignette, dialogue, and in graphic form corresponding to three prepositions, for/about/with. In this way, she illustrates the tensions associated with the process of conducting CBPR from her proximate position in the organization.
Keywords
A Research Story
In the spring of 2011, I embarked on what was to be a critical ethnography on a small ethno-specific organization in Toronto that represents the diverse Romani community. The Roma Community Centre (RCC) was founded in 1998 to advocate on behalf of the first large group of European Roma who had arrived in Canada as asylum-seekers (refugee claimants). Since then, the organization’s mandate has expanded to serve the local Romani community of perhaps 80,000 who are increasingly diverse in immigration status, country of origin, and cultural practices. The Executive Director and a majority of the Board members are Romani in heritage. RCC’s vision is to build solidarity among the Roma diaspora through provision of settlement and social programs, to challenge pernicious representations of the “Gypsy” in the public imagination, and to promote the interests of the Canadian Roma community to the public, to service providers, and to policy makers. My intention is to gain an understanding of the complexity of the group by placing personal narratives within the context of Canadian refugee policy and European and Canadian histories. To lay the groundwork for this long research path, I spent a great deal of time as a volunteer at the organization doing a wide range of tasks. My work continues today.
As a result of what grew to be a deep involvement in the process of community development, I developed wonderfully positive relationships with many individuals associated with the RCC. Over these four years, I have collected hundreds of hours of observations and hundreds of pages of documents about the organization, and conducted interviews with many Romani individuals both involved and uninvolved with RCC. My official goal is the completion of a book manuscript for which I signed a contract with a publisher in 2012. But these research activities are not my primary focus; they are more like a tangent to my expanded role as a volunteer community worker. While recognizing the curious implications of this position, I wish to set them aside for now. Instead, I wish to describe how my reciprocity expanded to absorb the acceptance of tasks that the small and severely under-resourced organization could not otherwise do. Apart from the occasional moment of anxiety, my main emotional response to this opportunity is one of privilege. The work is immeasurably rewarding. While I wait for the day when I might receive funding to support an authentic community-based participatory research project, I carry on building connections with people and learning about the community. For purposes of this publication, I refer to my current activities as community-based work, or simply as CBPR. It was a protracted and at times fraught discovery to realize that this rubric captures the nature of my work more effectively than does critical ethnography. Even then, it is not entirely right for reasons that will become clear.
This story is neither about what I learned about the organization and its members, nor about the any of the themes emergent in the research, nor how I theorize about such themes. This story is about the research process as I experience it, foregrounding features that are typically kept hidden from public view. Canadian ethnographer Geraldine Pratt astutely remarks that researchers
enact the university as a domain for the production, reproduction, and conservation of textual knowledges—an extraordinarily restrictive understanding of what we actually do as researchers. Our actual research performances, the now of research, goes largely un(re)marked, even though they clearly exceed the written trace. (Pratt, 2000, pp. 649-650)
It is this excess with which I am occupied. In particular, I reveal the tensions that emerge from the undertaking of community-based research. They derive from my ongoing review of the interdependency between the many Romani individuals with whom I work and myself.
In CBPR, as with all critical approaches in the qualitative tradition, the optimal commitment is to research in respectful collaboration with the community. Through an act of reflexivity, the researcher is to abandon her role as authority, guide, or chief decision maker, and, among many other activities, engage in non-hierarchical, mutual dialogue with her participants, placing their ideas and knowledge at the forefront of the research design. In one take on this, CBPR is defined as a
form of collective, self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality, coherence, satisfactoriness or justice of their own social or educational practices, as well as the understanding of these practices and the situations in which these practices are carried out. (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988, p. 5)
My investment in these principles notwithstanding, my experience in the field taught me that the community-based participatory researcher’s role is impure. The merging of a researcher role with that of active volunteer is not in itself problematic, for as Blake (2007) puts it, community-based researchers “engage with a subject position that identifies them as simultaneously researcher and community member” (p. 412). Advocacy and activism are functions that are entirely appropriate in CBPR (Angrosino, 2005, p. 739; Fine, 2013). Somewhat more troubling is the way that work with the community often slips into work for the community and work about the community, two positions that are less consistent with the spirit of CBPR. But to deny them seems dishonest. To do so is antagonistic to the self-reflection expected of community-based researchers. My aim in this story is candidness in disclosing the perpetual incompletion in writing up community-based research. I wish to challenge the assumption that scholars are recognized by intellectual regimes as professional repositories of knowledge (or masters of methods) and replace it with the assertion that we may not know much after all, or to frame it positively, we always have more to learn. Even then, we may not get it quite right.
The ethics of field research take on a particular significance for a researcher who occupies a position of relative privilege in relation to the research participants who are located differently with respect to their race/ethnicity and social class (Chataway, 1997; Pratt, 2007; Twine & Warren, 2000). Of salience is my whiteness and my social class privilege in relation to most of the Romani people I know. But it is not enough to name one’s positionality. A researcher must also determine the ways in which her positionality bears on the conduct of the research (Potts & Brown, 2005). I believe that this theme is the subtext of what follows. It cannot be separated from the montage I present.
Writing is a process of discovery that, in the “most contemporary of formulations . . . give rise to more dynamic, problematic, open-ended, and complex forms” (Guba & Lincoln, 2005, p. 210). Richardson and St. Pierre (2005) discuss writing as a method of inquiry. Specifically, they promote ethnographic writing as a creative analytic process (CAP). Shaped by dialogues in feminism, postmodern, queer, and critical race theories, CAP ethnographies invite a re-visioning of format that blur the boundaries of literary, artistic, and social scientific genres. Foregrounding writing as a process rather than a product, they throw the claim of the writer’s privileged knowledge into high relief as it is revealed to be a product of her positionality, not of her authentic authority. In refusing the convention of a singular narrative, the messiness of dialogue and uncertainty is placed at the foot of the reader who is asked to participate in the co-creation of meaning.
One such innovative form in CAP ethnographies is the montage. Borrowed from film studies, the montage presents multiple pictures that are juxtaposed or superimposed. In the new ethnographic writing, montage is a way of presenting disparate elements—written, image-based, or other forms of text that reflect a range of voices, perspectives, and angles. Montage leads to experimentation with story, poetry, dialogue, first-person accounts, autobiography, and image, expanding the possibilities for understanding the complexity of social life. As one creative response to the dilemma posed in representing the assemblage of research, impressions, and voices on a topic, montage may dovetail with rhizoanalysis. I concur with Deleuzian philosopher Rosi Braidotti (2010), who in noting the mobilization in writing of “one’s capacities to feel, sense, process and sustain the impact in conjunction with the complex materiality of the outside” (p. 310). Rhizoanalysis leads away from interpretation toward “experimentation including novel connections and concept creation, affect, assemblage, power (stabile, and disruptive), and space” (Masny, 2013, p. 345). It is in admiration of such experimentation that I present the following encounters with the “complex materiality of the outside,” so very much alive in my community work.
Community-Based Research for the Roma
My work for the RCC and its members involve not only several instances of advocacy work for individuals but also ongoing support for the Executive Directors. The latter continues to this day even though my work for individuals is reduced as the number of refugee claimants dropped considerably with the government’s legal and policy instruments aimed at discouraging their arrival and stay in the country. Recent reforms to the Canadian refugee determination system reflect a fundamental shift in principle away from humanitarianism toward conservatism. The aegis of these reforms is “Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act” of 2012 that expedites deportations of refugee applicants from countries that unchecked Ministerial powers designate as “safe.” It also differentiates refugee classes and fast-tracks information-gathering process in which the time required for an appeal is effectively eliminated. The law discourages all those who seek asylum to Canada, but as one legal expert asserts, it was patently oriented against the Roma (S. Aiken, personal communication, March 1, 2012). Former Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s anti-Roma rhetoric was undeniable in his visit to Hungary on October 9, 2012, where, in his meetings with Hungarian political leaders, he aimed to stop “the abuse of our system and generosity by bogus asylum claimants.” On October 29, 2011, Kenney made an unexpected visit to Toronto’s Roma Community Centre to enquire about the large number of withdrawals by Roma refugee claimants (Roma Community Centre, 2011). In using withdrawal rates in the calculation for Designated Countries of Origin (also known as “safe countries”; Government of Canada, 2012), the minister set the conditions for the refugees’ repatriation while making them the authors of their own fate. That is, voluntarily withdrawn claims are used to demonstrate safety of the country of origin and the denial of the conditions of persecution from which the Roma are fleeing. These conditions are legion (Council of Europe, 2012; European Roma Rights Centre, 2012a, 2012b; European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2012; Jovanovic, 2013).
In my work for the organization, I accepted countless requests for help for things like filling out forms and making phone calls for members, making inquiries about office rental space, board meeting preparations, researching the requirements for obtaining charitable status, and grant writing. With “Liz,” another key volunteer, I collected documents for lawyers’ refugee cases and generated responses to the government’s new refugee laws. These activities may be expected of an ethnographer, especially one committed to an advocate role. But I suspect that the quantity and quality of my contributions may occupy the extreme end of the spectrum for reciprocity with research participants.
The following three vignettes illustrate my work for the Roma. As the first element in the montage, they were selected for their substantive content and the significance of the role I played in each. My choices of this and subsequent elements (work about and work with) derive from my subjectivity alone, not from a theoretical or methodological model. They occurred to me as effective modes of representing the multi-vocal texts emergent in a complex research space. I sought forms that actively resist the uni-dimensionality of scholarly prose. They are at once tightly and loosely connected with each other: tightly in terms of their reticulation with the goal of social justice and community building, loosely in terms of the practical and social forces that threaten the integrity of those goals. I convey these texts to evince those threats for they are as intrinsic to the work of the community-based researcher as are interviews and observations. Like Braidotti’s “complex materiality of the outside,” they are central to the decidedly messy research process, however readily published accounts ignore them. This montage tells the understory.
Mirela’s Refugee Board Hearing
I first met “Mirela” when she arrived in Toronto as a refugee claimant in the fall of 2011. Her case was unique because of her steadfast work in collecting evidence of hate crimes against the Roma in Eastern Europe. She had fled because of her fear of reprisals for her activities. Mirela’s experience was extensive, and over time, she disclosed to me her private and personal struggles as a professional, an asylum-seeker, and a mother. The documents accompanying her refugee claim made a formidably high pile of papers. She was the only claimant I saw who toted her own documents about in a wheeled briefcase erasing the distinction between clients and their lawyers ubiquitous on the 4th and 5th floors of the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) building on Victoria Street. My ally Liz and I had obtained Mirela’s lawyer’s permission to observe her hearings but only after several had passed, with more to come. The IRB member told us that our presence was tolerated as observers but that we were not permitted to talk under any circumstances, to take notes or recordings, or to otherwise interfere with the proceedings. Mirela was questioned not only by the IRB member, but also by federal Citizenship and Immigration representatives. During our post-hearing conversation, we speculated that they had been sent to build a case against her. Her narrative challenged the Canadian government’s denial of systemic racial persecution of the Roma. If the IRB were to accept her refugee application, it would have crucial implications for thousands of other Romani claimants.
The IRB member’s questions drew out many details about Mirela’s case, but then they took a turn toward personal issues that seemed unrelated to the refugee claim. He elicited her tears, and more than once, Liz and I exchanged glances of dismay about the grueling process. Mirela was more than generous with the information she provided. She knew that it was incumbent on her to prove to the IRB member that hers was a definitive case of persecution on the basis of ethnicity, not just a “bogus” economic claim. She was here because she had to flee, not just because she was seeking a better life. But she had to persuade him. Her every word was filtered through his sieve of truthfulness. Any suspected inconsistency was met with the IRB member’s raised eyebrow. And yet another question. We sat in the room all morning and all afternoon. Mirela smoked during the brief lunch break, collecting optimism and endurance. As of February 2015, she is still waiting for the final decision to be rendered. She had been told to expect it in March of 2014. It is now over 3 years since her arrival in Toronto, years that saw frequent change in her personal and professional life. But there has been no change in her full-time work helping other Romani claimants whose needs range from communicating with spouses in jail to finding enough food to eat.
Gabor’s Request for Sanctuary
A church in the city’s east end invited me to speak to a gathering of their members about “Gabor” and his family. The organizers of the session wanted to hear more information about who they were, hoping to sway those members who were reluctant to provide the family with sanctuary as their last resort for remaining in Canada as refugee claimants. A small group of friends had been accompanying Gabor, his wife, and children to the Canadian Border Security Agency offices on Airport Road whenever they were summoned for decisions or to submit or collect documents. From their home, it could take them two hours to get there by public transit. I suspect that one reason why families are regularly forced to come in is to ensure they had not gone “underground,” but its effect was to submit them to the long arm of control. The waiting room is austere with four rows of chairs and little else. People wait to hear if and when they are to pull up whatever roots they had laid down over the years they expected the official IRB decision about their case. Once when I was there with RCC’s Executive Director, she recognized some Romani youth waiting to collect their plane tickets for repatriation to Europe. She lamented their lost chance in Canada.
It turned out that Gabor received a stay decision mere hours before their return flight date. That bought them a few months of time. No sanctuary was necessary, and eventually, the family was granted their Humanitarian and Compassionate request to remain permanently in the country. They continued to look for apartments and jobs, and after discarding their bedbug-infested beds, they had to earmark their meager welfare funds for replacement mattresses. They had to start over yet again, moving apartments on an average of twice a year for the past 8 years, a pattern that persisted in Toronto. I tried to advocate for them in whatever way I could—obtaining a work permit, finding furniture, helping with a small business idea, visiting, but I was stymied when they asked me to act as guarantor for an apartment they wished to lease. It drove home a question with which I always struggled: What are the boundaries of my role? What principles do I turn to to discern an appropriate response? I said no to their first request having consulted a refugee lawyer friend who advised against it. Some time passed during which time Gabor told me that they had to give up their apartment and move into a shelter where the family of six shared a single room. Several attempts to rent an apartment failed since Gabor’s credit rating was poor, and the landlord required a guarantor. They messaged me for help. This time I said yes. They moved into their two-bedroom unit in July of 2014 where their rent is deducted automatically from their welfare check. They are left with about US$600/month for all other expenses.
Tsura’s Plans for the Organization
On the evening of what was to be my last monthly board meeting for a while at the RCC, the Executive Director asked me to arrive an hour early to help her sort things out. This had become a regular practice and I was happy to help. By that time, after 2 years of involvement at the organization, “Tsura” had become a friend and colleague. She had become accustomed to turning to me not only for grant writing but for general assistance with her impossibly heavy workload. I was her sounding board, and Tsura always had a lot to share. For some time, she had been talking about her need to cut back her hours because the stress of her multiple jobs and inadequate support were becoming too much to bear. Having been advised, even begged by some to reduce the number of services offered at the RCC, Tsura finally agreed on the merits of that strategy. The meeting started, and I was an observer as usual. When the time came to discuss ways to overcome the organization’s financial and staffing strains, Tsura did not mention a reduction in services. I piped up, reminding her of her decision to cut back on the organization’s activities. But she was unprepared for it in this forum. On hearing my words, she hung her head and wrung her hands through her hair in a gesture of utter exasperation. To my dismay, I realized that I had gone too far. The line of appropriate and inappropriate forms of engagement is often difficult to determine and this time I had surely overstepped it. My error was costly; with Tsura’s knowledge, I retreated from the RCC for a few months. By the time I returned, she was about to be replaced with another Executive Director. The experience taught me that although it may be continuous, my self-reflection is inadequate to ensure that I remain safely encamped as a researcher-advocate without succumbing to the temptation to interfere in the members’ decision making.
Community-Based Research About the Roma
In relation to my research, I am sometimes asked by academic and non-academic organizations to give presentations about the Roma. In addition to providing a good deal of background information about the group, I am asked to tell their stories about life in Europe and in Canada, the factors affecting their lives, the problems they face, and possible solutions. In short, I am expected to deploy the power of representing the lives of others. Yet doing so engages what has been described as the crisis of representation (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005). Postmodern philosophies have warned that the gaze into another’s life is always filtered through the writer’s language and social location. As a result, the ethnographer always infers the meaning of a group’s words and actions. There is no possibility of a final or singular authoritative meaning or of presenting an all-encompassing, “objective” account of a group. The risk in presenting research about a group is that the researcher’s perspective is regarded as more accurate than that of the community members themselves. It produces the truth it supposedly reflects (Ryan, 1988, cited in Gubrium & Holstein, 1997, p. 87). The researcher’s expertise is illegitimate, however, since it assumes that she must translate others’ voices to make them intelligible. The temptation to speak for the group implies that participants are passive or an undifferentiated mass. The implication is that members may be understood as victims: deficient, uneducated, inarticulate.
Writing about a group confers professional benefits on the researcher who takes credit for producing an academically sound text. Participants’ social conditions are written about but they are unchanged as a result of the research (Cameron & Gibson, 2005). Yet the conventions of my role demand the production of a text, a single account explaining the Roma to the world. I become the conduit for information about them. As general information is scant and usually erroneous, I find myself in the role of authority mediating the communicative space between the public and the Roma. This raises ethical issues as, in the words of Canadian Romani authority Ronald Lee (2009), “We have for too long been erroneously defined by outsiders—now we must correctly define ourselves!”
What follows is a composite dialogue fashioned from those in which I engage with audience members at various forums. Readers are to imagine that it follows a presentation about the Roma in which I am providing the answers to some common questions. My purpose is to substantiate the crisis of representation when presenting research about one’s participants. To wit, each answer is partial and ideologically loaded and would not necessarily withstand scrutiny by insiders. The second answer disturbs the certitude I express as spokesperson for the Roma. Although the interlocutor of the second answer is not named, some readers may accuse me of appropriating voice. I recognize that the exclusion of authentic dialogue with a Romani speaker is antithetical to my methodology. I wish to avoid this error, but I claim neither authenticity nor innocence. The technique is contrived and consciously risks participation in the crisis of representation. Yet it, too, reflects my research trajectory that knows both the inclusivity of perspectives—like that emanating from the epistemic privilege of a Romani speaker—and the exclusivity embedded in my writing about it.
Q So the Roma are a real ethnic group? I thought Gypsy was just a general word for hippies or drifters. Good-for-nothings who can’t settle down. I mean, they are nomads by nature, right?
A The Roma are a real ethnic group. They originate from northwest India, and while the exact dates are disputed, they likely migrated from there in the 12th century. They spent a long time in Armenia and Asia Minor, then in the 16th century, dispersed all across Europe. The idea of the gypsy is unrelated to the reality of the Roma, but it arose from the way the group was received and the way they presented themselves when they first arrived in Europe. Nomadism is not their nature. They were misperceived as threatening outsiders from the Islamic incursion, and forced to continually migrate throughout Europe, practicing their trades wherever they could. They were enslaved in Moldavia and Wallachia until 1863. No nomadism there! Almost all of the Roma are settled now and have been for a very long time, some forcefully so. Gypsy has taken on a general meaning of nomadism based on the wrong idea that the Roma have no desire for security. But their insecure living conditions are a result of a very long pattern of exclusion from the mainstream economy. The idea of the gypsy nomad romanticizes the Roma but bears no relationship to their lives.
A Who calls themselves Roma? Not the Sinti, not the Kale, not the Gitano. And some Roma still call themselves Gypsies. Who are you to name them? And as for being nomadic, some groups traveled, some didn’t, and some would but were forced to stop. The Roma know how to survive when the Gadje would prefer them not to. They know how to adapt to anything, like calling themselves Gypsies and claiming they came from “Little Egypt.” They ARE secure! That’s why they continue to live as they like all over the world.
Q Why do so many Roma come to Canada? Can’t they more easily go to other countries in Europe?
A The rules for member states of the European Union (EU) require newcomers to leave after three months if they cannot find employment. This affects the Roma most of whom have little work experience due to the systemic discrimination in employment in their countries of origin after the demise of communism. If they flee persecution in their home country, they cannot expect to permanently settle in another European country. The EU does not recognize refugee claims from within Europe, only from places like Africa or Asia. And there is no security for Central European Roma who migrate to Western Europe. Even the Roma who settled in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Sweden generations ago face discrimination, expulsion, destruction of their homes, high unemployment, grinding poverty, and violent racism. They come to Canada for the same reason that other immigrant groups come. They have heard that Canada welcomes newcomers and gives them a chance to start a new life of opportunity for their children free from racism. But it’s not so easy for Roma asylum-seekers to stay in Canada. About 85% are forced to return to Europe every year because of Canadian refugee laws and policies.
A You think life is so good in Canada? I know you’re fishing for this—yes, it’s better than life in Europe where most Roma have no chance at all. But what Canadian will give a job to Romani refugee claimants? Their English is bad or non-existent, and while both the men and women have skills, they usually can only find work that pays cash. These jobs don’t last. Things are so bad in Europe that many Roma have learned not to admit their ethnicity to Canadians. They avoid things like English classes because . . . well do you know how deep racism can affect you? I bet you don’t. In the meantime, they wait for a decision on their refugee claim. If they arrived before 2013, they could wait for years. Some are still waiting. But now they are deported faster. So why make an attempt to lay down roots if you know that at any day, you’ll be forced to leave? Isn’t it ironic how their forced migration in Europe continues in Canada?
Q Isn’t there a bit of truth in the stereotype about the Roma? How else do you explain why they are rejected everywhere they go? I know people who have traveled to Europe and they talk about Gypsy crime there. And here, aren’t they all on welfare?
A Among the dozens of Romani sub-groups, the most impoverished among them may turn to illegitimate means of making a living. But theft and begging are crimes of poverty. We have to look at the root causes of this activity. It is not a choice freely made. European racism against the Roma is profound and held in place by nationalisms, histories, institutions, and shear power. Whiteness is normalized and it controls the way it engages groups who are seen as essentially different and inferior. The Roma are routinely discriminated against in employment, housing, education, the courts, the media, and the police. Their poverty compounds their disempowerment. Many, perhaps most, political leaders allow anti-Roma discrimination to continue with impunity. Despite this, most Romani people in Europe are law-abiding and are simply seeking a place for themselves where they can exercise the same rights and freedoms that other Europeans take for granted. In Canada, refugees have to start off on welfare while they learn the system, learn English, and learn how to get by. It’s a huge challenge to overcome the effects of an exclusion that has endured for generations. But given a chance, the Roma want to succeed. Just like members of any other ethnic group, no generalization can be made about who the Roma are or what they do.
A I bet you’ve never known a Romani person. Do you see how the Gadje make the Gypsy? The stereotyped Gypsy is everything the Gadje is not but wants to be: close to nature, free, naïve, and tied to a strong community. Even the negative stereotype is secretly admired: the cunning trickster who gets away with anything. See? Gadje love AND hate the Gypsy. This makes them crazy, so to live with it, the Gadje make the Gypsy into a caricature, not a full human being. But it’s the Gadje who have the problem! They only know themselves as good if they make the Gypsy out to be bad. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because, like I said, the Roma know how to adapt. There are things that the Gadje cannot understand, okay? But if you want it your way, look: There are more young Roma all the time who are entering university, and countless examples of Romani people who work in all sorts of occupations and professions. They are judges, doctors, business people, police officers, and artists. Some take advantage of training programs for Roma offered by governments and NGOs. But can you blame them if many have learned to distrust outsiders?
Community-Based Research With the Roma
CBPR involves grassroots community participation in formulating and acting on the purpose of the research. In applying the approach to refugee and other diasporic groups, Collet (2008, p. 81) describes the principles of CBPR: (a) It recognizes community as a unit of identity; (b) it builds on strengths and resources within the community; (c) it facilitates collaborative, equitable partnerships in all phases of the research; (d) it promotes co-learning and capacity building among all partners; (e) it integrates and achieves a balance between research and action for the mutual benefit of all partners; (f) it emphasizes local relevance of public problems and perspectives that recognize the multiple determinants of those problems; (g) it disseminates knowledge gained to all partners; and (h) it involves a long-term process and commitment (see also Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005; Reitsma-Street & Brown, 2004; Genat, 2009). Critical and emancipatory by principle, CBPR is aimed at the correction of social injustices and the constraints imposed by social structures, specifically those that produce inequities of power.
Community-based research may be understood as a tangent of indigenous (Denzin, Lincoln, & Smith, 2008) and decolonizing (Smith, 1999) methodologies. It is committed to the principle of epistemic privilege of community members in which their critical insights on marginalization are recognized as authoritative on the basis of their authentic and personal knowledge (Collins, 1993; Dei, 2008; Mills, 1997; Narayan, 1988). Collaborative in research design, community engagement constitutes a best practice for conducting CBPR. Actions are shared by all participants and are manifest in various ways. Goals are community-driven and participants recognize outcomes as credible and meaningful. At the RCC, such goals involve community-building and nurturing relationships across deep intra-group differences, abolishing discriminatory institutional and interpersonal practices aimed at the Roma, and eliminating social inequalities they experience. Specific desires involve outreach to local Romani families, provision of culturally appropriate immigrant settlement services, support for employment and entrepreneurship and the alleviation of poverty, challenging negative public opinion about the Roma, correcting spurious representations of the “Gypsy” in the media, and developing a stronger political voice that could, for example, demand family reunification for Roma refugees in Canada.
How may CBPR be brought into line with my community work for/about/with the Roma? Community work for the Roma excludes the collaborative decision making required in CBPR because it involved only individuals and did not address broader social change. Nor did it contribute directly to the goals outlined above. To use C. Wright Mills’ words, it addressed private troubles not public issues. Or did it? I may assert that the impact of my interactions with Mirela, Gabor, and Tsura were indirect. Friends within and beyond RCC were likely told of my actions; some observed them personally. They will affect other Romani asylum-seekers, and in Tsura’s case, they may have stimulated reflection among the Board members about ways to move forward. Indeed, the Executive Director who replaced Tsura took the organization in a new direction. My actions for the Roma benefit the community by helping these individuals contribute to political organizing and to strengthening community relationships. As key members of the community and activists for political change for the Roma, Mirela’s, Gabor’s, and Tsura’s activities advance social justice goals. My work for them facilitates the work they do, especially with the improvement of conditions for local Roma. Their work demolishes Gypsy stereotypes and increases the community’s capacity for social change.
Community work about the Roma excludes the direct voice of community members by representing them in the words of an outsider. But it also achieves the purpose of public education and challenging negative public opinion. It creates public support for campaigns to eliminate discrimination against the Roma or to create economic opportunities for them. Community work about the Roma could lay the groundwork for improvements in services and programs by creating links to other organizations. This may invite support for the RCC through investments of social or economic capital. A stronger organization could form a more unified political voice and assert its interests in policy arenas affecting such things as employment opportunities or improved provision of settlement services. Social change will occur, but the Roma will define its form, direction, speed, and purpose.
Articulating with a desire for social change through community development and the correction of the multiple injustices meted out to those who identify as Roma, CBPR commends collaborative research with a community. In the figure below, I identify four relevant elements in CBPR work with local Roma: grassroots participation, the development of reciprocal and trusting relationships, an emphasis on community strengths and resources, and a commitment to social change. This section discusses the complexities and conundrums that arise in undertaking this work. My support has been directed to organizational capacity building that enables decision making on appropriate ways to achieve the community’s goals. I have obtained funding for programs aimed at preventive health care, youth outreach, a community festival, and a legal clinic. These programs both directly and indirectly contribute to RCC’s goals for local Roma especially community building, provision of services, and practical improvements in social conditions. I believe they engage the spirit of CBPR. I have also provided support for organizational development. For example, at the September 2014 visioning session funded by the balance of a small university grant I received, the advocacy committee articulated their terms of reference: “Promotion of community-led education, political awareness and social change work regarding Roma marginalization and social exclusion” (Roma Community Centre, 2014).
Priorities such as these are articulated by the community and are often political in orientation. They reflect a commitment to strengthen community resources. Research in service of these and other goals position community members at the center of any effort. In CBPR with the Roma, all members participate in every stage from identifying needs and assets, to articulating principles, research design, collecting and analyzing data, using and communicating the results, and developing programs that may arise from research outcomes. As the university-based researcher, I do not steer the process. Every effort is made to hear diverse views and to engage in actions that are relevant to the local group. In my experience, grassroots participation in such efforts pivot on the development of trusting relationships between the researcher and community members.
Efforts to bring my activities in alignment with the principles of CBPR evoke conflicting responses in me, however. I feel entire confidence in the methodology (and methods) and in the steps made toward its fulfillment. My relationships with the RCC staff and volunteers are robust and active, and marked by transparency and ongoing dialogue. Diverse views and local knowledges are solicited in the form of interviews, and established community members act as my advisors. A lack of funding (along with other factors discussed below) hampers progress toward goals, but the potential for collective capacity building and the commitment to working toward shared goals is evident. Nonetheless, the certainties of my objectives conflict with uncertainties in my research practice with the community. I elaborate on these in Figure 1 below in which four key factors—grassroots participation, reciprocal relationships, community resources, and social change—are selected from the standards for CBPR presented earlier in this section. These four elements were chosen to enable depth of analysis over breadth. Furthermore, because they are arguably the most problematic for a researcher attempting to do CBPR with the Roma (in collaboration with the RCC), it is necessary to explore them. Some make their impact on me as community worker while others affect my work as community researcher. More often than not, it is a mixture of both attesting to the complexity of my role. Around each of the four elements a question hovers. The specific relationship between these elements is best rendered graphically as another element in this montage. Together, they form a matrix that suggests the inherent tensions in the practice of CBPR.
Selected factors in Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) with the Roma, with questions.
Grassroots Participation by the Community
The Roma Community Centre underwent significant changes in 2014. The new Executive Director sought help in creating a working Board of Directors whose members accept responsibilities for governance and fundraising. New people, Roma and non-Roma, were recruited to serve on one of four committees formed for the first time in RCC’s history. The by-laws were revised to reflect current practices. A new location was rented, and core funding was available for 1 year. Projects are ongoing or proposed, several grant applications were submitted, and promising new community partnerships are being forged. There is a palpable spirit of renewal. The organization has gained strength. Its growing number of key members makes decisions productively and, with very few exceptions, is committed to working together toward common goals. It is a good base on which to build.
But RCC does not represent all of the Romani people in the city. Of its nineteen key members, fourteen identify as Roma (or part Roma), twelve of whom are Canadian-born or naturalized Canadians. The other two arrived between three to four years ago, both from Hungary. Despite the size of the entire Roma community in Toronto, there are no representatives of Roma from Central and Eastern European countries other than Bulgaria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. There are no Romanians, no Croatians, no Slovaks, no Russians. There is a single representative of the sizable Toronto Kalderash Roma community.
In Toronto, the Roma are a strikingly divided group. Romani sub-group, language, immigration status, religion, and country of origin are among the meaningful differences separating segments of the community. Since the late 2000s, Hungarian Roma refugee claimants have been by far the largest number of newcomers and were the most likely to contact the organization with requests for help, but RCC was founded in 1998 to aid those arriving primarily from the Czech Republic. Differences between these two groups are vast. Indeed, the differences within these groups are sufficiently large that it prevents much dialogue among them. When I first approached the organization in 2011, its services reflected an orientation toward Hungarians. However, among its past key members have been Roma from many other Central European countries like Romania, Serbia, Bosnia, and Macedonia, but also Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and most recently, Mexico. I suspect that among Rom community organizations, it is unique in the world for assembling Roma of such diverse heritage. Some speak Romanes, and others do not. Some work in traditional occupations, and some do not. They are Catholic, Pentecostal Evangelical, Orthodox, Muslim, and Jewish. Some have been in the city for four generations, and a number of Romani asylum-seekers continue to arrive every month. But RCC’s outreach to all of these groups is admittedly poor. As a result, when broaching the CBPR standard of grassroots collaborative participation by the community, it is impossible to be inclusive of “the” community. Researchers recognize this problem, cautioning against accepting the participant community as a monolith (Minkler, 2004; Reitsma-Street & Brown, 2004, p. 304). Communities are segmented by gender, class, ethnic, occupational, political values, and other intersecting factors. Indeed, such factors may outweigh the shared characteristics of a group identity (Collet, 2008). For diasporic groups especially, differences in migration history and citizenship status in their host country are significant.
The question is “grassroots participation by the community” but with what community?
Reciprocal and Trusting Relationships
In his description of a community research project, Stoecker (2005) noted the three years in which his team “got acquainted with the community, doing a few surveys and some field research to increase their own understanding of this unique culture” (p. 29). At the time of writing, it has been three years since I began my work with the RCC. My work continues today and includes grant writing, event planning, and advocacy. I attend picnics, meetings, performances, and protests. I have come to know all of the key members of the organization well, and a good number of others in the community at large. I know newcomers and those who arrived as claimants in the 1990s migration movement, people at risk of deportation, and those with strong roots in the city. My earliest connection with Toronto Roma was not with the RCC at all but with a family of Hungarian musicians who arrived in 1998. My family assisted with their refugee claim and since then, I have come to know the extended family now numbering 25. My reciprocity with this family is a microcosm of the rest—I attended one of their refugee board hearings, wrote a petition in support of their claim, and attend some of their music performances. I attended a church service with the family of one brother, and was invited to see a new apartment and new baby. They are most welcoming to me and willing to be interviewed and photographed.
The term “reciprocity” is inadequate in revealing the full nature of these relationships that are best described as friendships. Many have visited my home purely for social gatherings. We break bread together. It is not a matter of the researcher gaining knowledge about her research participants; the knowledge is reciprocal. They know me well beyond the confines of the project. I have learned the value in cultivating such relationships—they facilitate the trust required to have conversations that cover the widest range of topics. I am often invited to share information, discussions, decisions, jokes, gossip, and personal moments that are remarkable in their meaningfulness. Many of these interactions are intended to be private and will remain so. My acquired understanding of the RCC and its pressing issues is extraordinarily rich, and members recognize my protracted learning process. I hope that my interactions with participants are experienced as wholly authentic, for as renowned Romani expert Ian Hancock (2002) says, “When you talk to us, be sincere, and say what you want; we have a lot of practice in recognizing insincerity” (p. 105).
As valuable as these relationships are, they have aroused uncertainty in me. The entanglements of my role and my responsibilities have provoked doubts about the consequences of some of my activities. CBPR demands what some have called “a rethinking of positionality. Whatever form these relationships take, personal transformation is almost inevitable and often highly desirable.” Still, the authors caution, “we need to be vigilant about our own power, and never unquestioningly assume [CBPR’s] benevolence” (Pain, Kindon, & Kesby, 2007, p. 15). It is certain that my positionality has led to a “rethinking” and personal transformation. But I am aware of my influence on some organizational decisions that have been made when I have expressed my personal opinions about the issues. The process is not one way; my opinions are sought.
CBPR may be possible only with the construction of trustful relationships, but what are the consequences when a researcher’s role has become conspicuously large? Or alternatively, when my roles as researcher and as community worker blur? The power vested in my ability to acquire some funding for the organization is one example. When core funding runs out in 2015, members may depend on me to find program monies a small portion of which usually gets allocated to rent and staff. To what extent will I be responsible for sustaining the organization given the inadequacy of revenues from the grants for which I applied? Another example is the occasional departure of individuals from the organization. Circumstances vary. I regret these events even in cases in which the Board found that the individual’s activities detracted from the RCC’s capacities. When some people abandon the organization, I can’t help but reflect on the interactions I had with the individual. I contemplate Chataway’s (1997) remark: “Although the interaction between two people might become more mutual over time, the influence of power in the larger societal context never disappears, but is manipulated and responded to in different ways over the course of the research relationship” (p. 757).
The question is “reciprocal and trusting relationships” but with what consequences?
Community Strengths and Resources
In its first visioning session for RCC’s Board of Directors and committees held in September 2014, the organization identified its priorities and made plans to achieve its goals. The four new committees—governance, resource development, refugee, and advocacy—consist of some long-term members and some brand new volunteers, and all are eager to take their first steps. Some time was spent in just getting to know each other to build the relationships necessary to ensure positive collaborations. The Executive Director had presented her vision for community development and the resources she is building through community partnerships. One board member is working on renewing the website, and in the works is a fundraising proposal for a sustaining membership drive. A full-time Youth Outreach Worker, a seniors’ preventive health program, a referral service for refugees, and a dental clinic are currently operating. Under development are a public health program for Romani women, and a training program for translators. One of my grant applications for a festival celebrating International Roma Rights Day on April 8, 2015, was just approved. The organization has never been stronger.
But when core funding runs out in 2015, the promise of this momentum will be compromised. The absence of stable funding for operating costs may make the visioning session an exercise in futility. Despite my multiple applications, there is no money for research either, a small portion of which would be earmarked for RCC for administrative costs incurred. In October of 2014, I submitted yet another application to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council that, if approved, will fund the hiring of Romani community members to lead two working groups of Romani youth in a three-year CBPR project. However, it is unrealistic to plan for this eventuality. In the meantime, funding opportunities are rare due to no fault of the RCC.
The roots of the problem lie in a neo-liberalism that introduced the logic of the marketplace into the public sector by shrinking the welfare state, downsizing, deregulating, and shifting responsibility to the individual (McGrath, Wood, & Young, 2010; Stasiulus, Hughes, & Amery, 2011). The idea of the social good has been all but vanquished. For not-for-profit organizations, the urgency to promote “efficiencies” has led to systematic under-funding. In December 2010, the Canadian government made significant cuts, US$53 million in total, to settlement services for newcomers (Pagliaro & Mahoney, 2010). Ontario was subjected to nearly US$44 million in cuts, approximately 20% of the funding for each immigrant service organization (Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2010b, cited in Pero, 2011). Conversion to unstable, restrictive funding for contracts rather than sustainable funding for ongoing programming has eroded the autonomy of settlement organizations (Joint Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement [CERIS], 2011; Scott, 2003). Instead, organizations find themselves negotiating a complex set of collaborations and conflicts with government actors (Wayland, 2006, p. 1). Short-term program-specific funding favors large agencies with robust administrative infrastructures (Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, 2000). Ethno-specific agencies are vulnerable. One study of settlement services in the Greater Toronto Area found that 83% of settlement agencies are located in the urban core, and of the 197 agencies included in the study, 51.3% were ethno-specific (Lim, Lo, Siemiatycki, & Doucet, 2005, p. 18). Ethno-specific agencies like the RCC tend to be small, under-staffed, under-funded, and run mainly by volunteers.
The question is “community strengths and resources” but with what funding?
Commitment to Social Change
Patti Lather (1995) warns researchers against the temptation to impose theoretical meanings on participants rather than constructing meanings with them. Shall I assume that my desire for social change is one shared by my participants? For me, social change for the RCC entails the construction of stronger social, political, financial, and cultural resources for purposes of community development that is inclusive of all local Roma. Does my desire for the empowerment of the organization and the broader community overshadow its meaning for others? While my idea emerges from good intentions that are generally consistent with CBPR, it is tempting to proceed with the assumption that its appeal is shared, like proverbial apple pie. But I cannot make that assumption. Myopic focus on a singular meaning of empowerment risks the exclusion of those to whom the research is aimed. What does social change mean to members of the organization? Of Roma community members at large? What would they do if they had unlimited resources? How do I attend to their desires whether they are the improvement of their material conditions, change in laws and policies effecting their exclusion, or the elimination of discrimination against them?
For some, needs may be less ambitious. Minkler (2004) found that his homeless participants were interested not in pressing for policy change but for “microlevel” change. This may also resonate for some Roma participants who seek satisfaction of personal quality-of-life issues. Many may desire only an improvement in their personal circumstances: a job, a better apartment, for family to join them from afar, for children to do well at school, and for the alleviation of illness. Social change implies a politicization for which some individuals feel unprepared. Even the Executive Director of RCC does not articulate her vision in the language of social justice but in terms of community development and practical programs to meet practical needs (Deniz, 2014a). In a Board of Directors’ meeting, she affirmed that “recommended” approaches should be focused, cost-effective, linked to mainstream services, collaborative and reciprocal, and peer based (Deniz, 2014b). She specifically called for outreach, capacity building to meet community needs, and organizational renewal. No mention was made of social change, social justice, or human rights, or of political activity, public education, or advocacy. Should I be surprised? I am reminded that “individual subjects may also hold multiple knowledges about aspects of their lives and broader social, economic and environmental conditions only some of which may be transformative . . .” (Cameron & Gibson, 2005, p. 318).
The question is “commitment to social change” but with what meaning?
A Montage of Prepositions
On the one hand, the deployment of my research with the Roma community is unequivocal. To ensure the quality of my fieldwork with this vulnerable group, I have dedicated countless hours to support the growth of the organization’s capacity to engage its goals. I have contributed to advocacy efforts and participated in activism related to refugees’ entitlement to freedom from discrimination. I have participated in a multiplicity of activities from the mundane to the abstract. Together with a small team of Roma and non-Roma collaborators, I wait to hear about my latest application to fund a CBPR proposal for Romani youth to embark on research whose design and purpose will emerge from them. “Full circle involvement” (Fuller, 2009, p. 10) for youth participants will establish a process for identifying objectives, making decisions, and initiating activities. Led by Romani community leaders, the youth will initiate a research project in accordance with their desired outcomes.
On the other hand, the question of the impact of my work remains. To what extent does it facilitate the achievement of RCC’s goals? Does my work serve the organization’s desire to do outreach to local Romani families, to provide culturally appropriate settlement services, to create employment and educational opportunities, or to improve the health of Romani women? Will the book I am drafting on the subject accomplish these ambitious goals? Can this be done given the challenges the organization faces or the challenges I face in the conduct of my work?
My desire is, of course, to ensure every success. And there have been successes. Due to the obstacles I face (not the least of which is no funding for translators), I have concentrated on the RCC and not on the community at large. My contributions to RCC are well-known to the active members, and the organization’s forward movement in programming, grant revenues, and governance are undeniable. I believe that my activities were made with transparency and collaboration, and were mindful of local knowledge. Community members continue to be engaged in the most direct ways from the articulation of problems to input on research design and priorities. Admittedly, some goals are more proximate than others. It is unreasonable to expect that my work will directly alleviate unemployment or create links between Romani sub-groups who diverge linguistically and otherwise. I have a better chance at educating the public about conditions in Europe that propel Romani asylum-seekers, or at challenging pernicious beliefs about the Roma in the media, or at generating a response to discriminatory policy. Perhaps the best way to encapsulate my work with the Roma is as support for capacity building of the RCC, a goal that resonates both with the ED and the literature on CBPR (Collet, 2008, p. 81). In my experience, work with the Roma may be done best by forging personal relationships, identifying a reasonable scope for the work given the resources available, accepting that the blend of researcher work and community work will always be in flux for the duration of my involvement, and accepting the inevitable errors and uncertainties that arise in the course of the work. Discrepancies between principles and the “complex materiality” of the everyday life of a community are indicators not of failure but of the dynamism that is CBPR.
When in doubt, it is wise to return to first principles. In principle, CBPR is “a practice directed deliberately toward discovering, investigating, and attaining intersubjective agreement, mutual understanding, and unforced consensus about what to do” (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005, p. 578). But the achievement of intersubjective agreement and consensus is an ambiguous project. My work for the Roma—the stories of Mirela, Gabor and Tsura—registers a mutuality converging on care. My work about the Roma—the contrived script with three speakers—evinces disparate perspectives each expressing the fragmented power of a knowledge claim. My work with the Roma illustrated graphically shows the links between principles and their interruptions in the practice of research. The questions that arise about community, consequences, funding, and meanings intimate not “intersubjective agreement” but complexity. Indeed, they render intersubjective agreement almost incongruent with the actuality of community-based research. Yet the tension is expected, even invited in this montage. A rhizomatic approach to writing captures the intense and chaotic stream of impressions in fieldwork that is “multi-sited, multi-semantic, and multi-referential . . . congealing in unpredictable ways, in unpredictable places” (Douglas-Jones & Sariola, 2009). In response to the inevitable tensions arising from CBPR with a complex group such as the Roma, I evoke Uma Narayan’s (1988) advice to maintain “methodological humility” (p. 37) when working across difference. What is required, she affirms, is a tentativeness, an un-knowing, an expectation of error. I hope to have made some movement toward this disposition.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.