Researching at the Margins: Methodological Issues of Access, Trust-Building and Role Negotiation in Romani Communities
The LUMINE workshops are intended to discuss topics related to the FIS2 project “Labor Unions, Migrant Workers and Ethnic Inequalities” (CUP: E53C24003840001), presented by the project members. The workshops aim to engage the DSRS academic and student community, as well as a wider audience interested in an in-depth discussion of these topics.
- research
- study
Abstract
This seminar addresses the methodological challenges of conducting ethnographic research in highly marginalised contexts, drawing on long-term fieldwork among Romani communities in Italy and Spain. Focusing on issues of access, trust-building, and role negotiation, it reflects on how research relationships are constructed in settings marked by power asymmetries, stigma, and institutional exclusion.
Based on seven-year ethnographic fieldwork among Xoraxané Roma in Sardinia, the seminar examines the mechanisms through which trust is constructed within the shared space of everyday living, with attention to social boundaries related not only to gender but also to locally defined forms of difference and otherness embedded in a highly marginalised yet symbolically dense living environment, where space is deeply intertwined with identity. Over time, these dynamics reshape field access and researcher positionality, framing trust as a negotiated and temporally grounded process that enables proximity to intimate and symbolically sensitive practices, while questioning conventional distinctions between observer and observed.
Discussant
Lucia Amorosi, Università di Trento
Chiara Bassetti, Università di Trento
Chair
Katia Pilati, Università di Trento