ABSTRACT
‘Understanding Romani identities beyond ethnic and binary frames’ discusses the various understandings of Romani identity in Romani Studies scholarship. It goes on to consider conceptualisations of Romani identity in relation to Stuart Hall’s concept of ‘new ethnicities’ as encapsulating ethnicity/‘race’, sex/gender, class, sexuality, gender identity and other categories of identification, paving the way for queer research-informed conceptualisations of Romani identities. The chapter discusses the relevance of concepts emanating from queer theory and queer of colour critique to conceptualisations of ethnic/‘racial’, sexual and gender identities, and the benefits of ‘queer intersectionalities’. It demonstrates the centrality of queer intersectional scholarship to understanding the intersectional nexus of ethnicity/‘race’, sex/gender, sexuality, gender identity, class, age, disability and so on. These social divisions are created artificially as a symptom of hegemonic power relations that exist in inequitable ways. Having provided this theoretical backbone, the chapter goes on to discuss the methods and methodology used during the qualitative, ethnography-informed research. It offers a methodological reflection on access to participants, data collection and data analysis, and critically examines queer non-Romani researcher positionality and reflexivity.
