Speaker Series: "Ethnic categorization between agency and structural constraints: Roma and non-Roma in Transylvanian settlements" by Tamás Kiss

Tamás Kiss, Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities
*Cosponsored by the Department of Political Studies

About the Lecture: : The paper presented by Dr. Kiss discusses the changing local systems of ethnic classification (more precisely the distinction between Roma and non-Roma) in twelve settlements in the Transylvanian region of Romania. The analysis is based on field research carried out in 2015 by a research team coordinated by the author, combining quantitative and qualitative methods – including an exhaustive survey of Roma households and a sample-based control survey of non-Roma households; and interviews, focus-groups, and ethnographic observation. One of our most important observations was that macro-level social processes profoundly shape local systems of (ethnic) classification.

About the Speaker: Tamás Kiss is Senior Researcher at the Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities in Cluj, Romania. He has an MA in Sociology (Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj, 2000) and a PhD in Cultural Studies (University of Pécs, Hungary, 2000). His research focuses on ethnic politics, demography, and ethnicity (ethnic categorization on censuses, demographic and migratory behaviour, discourses about ethnic demography). He is the author of several books on these subjects in Romanian and Hungarian, and of a long list of articles in Hungarian, Romanian and English (including articles in leading peer-reviewed international journals in the field of East European politics and ethnicity and nationalism studies).