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Continuities and Discontinuities in the Transnational Social Field. A Case of the Margovany Roma

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2018

Abstract

The article is based on a long-term field research in an Eastern Slovak Romani settlement and an English town, to which Roma migrated from the settlement. The paper attempts to disrupt a bipolar approach to the migration of Roma to England, and, at the same time, to point to the transnational interconnectedness of the Romani community and to the replication of inter-group boundaries patterns.

Such a dynamic approach to migration allows the authors to consider a different phenomenon, namely religious conversion of Roma to Pentecostal churches. This leads to an observation of parallels in the narratives of conversion and migration, which are both based on a dichotomy of "new" and "old", and inclusion of the religious conversion phenomenon into the analysis of migration, alongside highlighting transnational social networks, acquiring secondary social bonds and strengthening local inter-group boundaries.