Abstract
For youth such as myself who grew up in a North American crucible, understanding the life circumstances of the Roma was limited to two-dimensional portrayals bobbing above the surface of the cultural iceberg. Depictions of the transnational diaspora of Roma youth and their communities were sparsely available in slideshows from introductory courses on human geography and snapshots of popular film and media. Like many who might consider themselves woefully ignorant of the plight of ethnic minority issues, I was released from the clockwork shackles of an ethnocentric stupor when exposed to the list of precarious exonyms faced by the Roma throughout the world, which served as a call to reflection on the connections between language, identity, and ethnicity and the vital role that being seen by society plays for those marginalized by it.
A richer tapestry is finally on display in Roma Minority Youth Across Cultural Contexts: Taking a Positive Approach to Research, Policy and Practice. The editors of the volume, Radosveta Dimitrova, David Lackland Sam, and Laura Ferrer-Wreder, and their network of contributing scholars draw upon their keen acumen on youth development and authoritative command of psychological research across cultures to present the enriching case that Roma communities are not bound by the categorical confines of an imposed etic, nor are Roma youth limited to a discourse on their status as a vulnerable minority. The central thesis of this multidisciplinary effort is that while Roma communities face a litany of comparative disadvantages in education and socioeconomic position, Roma youth should not be viewed as liabilities, but as possessing a vibrant resiliency in the face of adversity when able to leverage their relational and dynamic strengths as resources. The case is made with applications of the non-deficit-based approach to appraising developmental circumstances known as positive youth development (PYD), a cross-cutting framework especially theorized by Richard Lerner that prioritizes these strengths.
The book is organized into three parts. The first consists of an overview of contextual factors, a review of the research literature, and a policy analysis of good practices. The second uses these with the PYD model and perspective to frame pathways for Roma youth to cope. The third summarizes novel and empirical findings from PYD applications to well-being research in an eye-opening number of countries of settlement for members of Roma communities, such as Bulgaria, Hungary, and Serbia. These contexts provide readers with a richness of diversity within Roma populations from a thick description of acculturation processes among Roma individuals. Other chapters give voice to Roma youth narratives on their everyday life experiences as they connect to their cultural identity, revealing patterns in self-evaluations that suggest family and peer closeness as missing pieces from the mainstream. A focus on the role of schools and school connectedness also underscores links between parental education and academic achievement for minority youth. Adding to the body of related work in migrant family studies such as Global Perspectives on Well-being in Immigrant Families (Dimitrova, Bender, and van de Vijver 2014), another key chapter identifies mismatches between institutional efforts to emphasize compulsory education and competing household attitudes about its perceived long-term returns to family wealth. Together, these chapters illustrate the nuance and sociocultural complexity of developmental processes for Roma minority youth and offer social connectedness as an antidote to marginalization.
The PYD perspective tethers the analysis but does not come without limitations. As observed in Chapter 6, “Roma youth in Bulgaria and Kosovo had many developmental assets, yet these did not translate into thriving outcomes among the youth,” inviting further scrutiny. However, the needs of Roma youth as an underrepresented context are convincingly synthesized in the final chapter, which incisively problematizes mainstream European societal and institutional barriers toward affirming acculturative steps and prescriptively calls for closer adherence to stated common principles of immigrant integration policies that feature the psychology of multiculturalism. Key points on the potential of identity resources are noted, and the chapter ends with a series of actionable insights, such as promoting Roma heritage culture to tap into strengths and facilitate inter-community dialogue, providing majority language training programs as practical solutions to educational and acculturative gaps, and making institutional changes that recognize Roma minority social well-being through civic participation.
Overall, the edited volume delivers on its promises to detail the skills, roles, and life contexts of the Roma people and invites readers to examine their assumptions about youth developing under the duress of disadvantageous conditions. Scholars of child and adolescent development will especially benefit from this text as a reflection on the state-of-the-field as it relates to cross-cultural insights on PYD, diverse youth issues of psychosocial significance, and critical views on the affordances of interventions and policies. The book is especially recommended for readers of similar topic-driven works like Language Brokering in Immigrant Families: Theories and Contexts (Weisskirch 2017). For others, this volume is poised to sensitize readers to the unique challenges faced by, but also strengths available to, Roma youth. Like the humanizing effects of a great ethnography, I expect the audience of this important contribution to leave with fresh perspectives on the diversity and dignity of the Roma, the prospects of Roma youth, and with luck, new dimensions with which to see development through their eyes.