Once again, BESTROM has good news to share. María Sierra's article "Creating Romanestan: A Place to be a Gypsy in Post-Nazi Europe" has been awarded by the editors of European History Quarterly as the best contribution of the year, to be available from now on in Open Access. The editors of EHQ, an academic history journal dedicated to the study of Europe from the later Middle Ages to post-1945, highlighted not only the fine work, but also the important topic María Sierra's article tackles.
Here you can find the abstract and a link to the journal webpage.
This article examines the political formula of Romanestan as conceived by Ionel Rotaru (1918–1982), a Romanian refugee in France after the Second World War. Romanestan is the most visible aspect of an ambitious plan demanding rights for those labelled Gypsies throughout the world. This study is of interest because it sheds new light on the problems of social and political readjustment after the Second World War from the standpoint of racial exclusion. Rotaru’s project was both the response to longstanding historical racist aggression and also a crucial turning point in the formation of Romani ethnic identity. What makes its study interesting is that the formula of the Romanestan wove the right to exist of those regarded as Gypsies into a creative transnational political project. Based on classified documents, this article highlights the political nature of processes of ethnicization and assesses the performative power of symbols.
More info: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0265691419836909