Gypsy's Advocate

Who am I? A gypsy, Turk, or Bulgarian? A recent study shows why some Bulgarians think ethnic Turks are "gypsies", why authentic gypsies say they are Turks when speaking to strangers (as a defense mechanism), and why Turks are confused about their identity. Pfew! Complicated indeed. I feel more gypsy and Bulgarian than I feel a Turk, and sometimes I am not at all sure where my loyalties lie when it comes to my "homeland". Do I have one?? I am doing research on the gypsy/Roma cultural rights for a term paper. I will argue that Gypsies are the victims of a degenerative policy-making context characterized by an unequal distribution of political power, social constructions that separate the "deserving" from the "undeserving"; and an institutional culture that legitimizes strategic, manipulative, and deceptive patterns of communication. Of the four categorizations that policy-makers use (contenders, advantaged, dependents, and deviants), I will put them in the deviant category- those who have virtually no political power and are negatively constructed as undeserving, violent, mean, etc). I am immersed into research, and I will also prepare a powerpoint presentation, with a sound track, and slide show. Eventually, this study will lead to the outcome of this degenerative policy-making model - environmental injustice that targets gypsies' cultural rights while stigmatizing them as polluters and trespassers (I will consentrate on the traveller gypsies of the UK-they have been persecuted for polluting communities that they moved in with their caravans).

This is a glaring paradox from the environmental governance perspective - because environmental governance argues that it is the "victims", the deviants, who are subjected to environmental injustice due to their vulnerability (like overexposure to polluting facilities). But in my case study, the gypsies (the deviants) themselves are socially constructed as polluters. In this case of 'reverse' environmental injustice the public constructs itself as the "victim". From this vantage point, the public is the 'advantaged' (those who are powerful and positively constructed). Deviant gypsies are left with little choice but to abandon their gypsy laws and traditions as travellers and settle down in substandard housing facilities provided by the government.

I will also look at the matter from the Thomas Friedman perspective. I will apply his metaphor, the lexus and the olive tree, to the gypsies. The lexus represents the industrialized, globalized world which in Friedmans terms 'creatively destructs' itself to recreate a better, more efficient world of commodities. The nomadic gypsy culture represents the olive tree-the authentic, traditional values.