CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Ramadani, Sevdjulje |
|---|---|
| Title | Confined faces of informality: the governance of informality and experiences of confinement in an informal Roma settlement in Serbia |
| Summary | This research explores Veliki Rit, an informal settlement in Serbia, significantly enlarged and transformed by the displacement of many Roma from Kosovo (1998-1999). I contextualize my researched locality within significant post-socialist changes that have been ongoing in the region. The political and socio-economic changes heavily impacted social downward mobility of many Roma households. I am specifically approaching my field site as multiscalar, targeting the presence of many actors embedded within power hierarchies. Relaying on the theoretical framework of ‘confined informality’ proposed by Pasquetti and Picker (2017), I examine informality through the prism of confinement at two levels. On the level of governance, I specifically focus on the city government, while on the livelihood level, I explore the social coping strategies of inhabitants. Firstly, I argue that confinement is a significant mechanism in governing Veliki Rit, by examining the usage of different means, mainly urban planning. Secondly, I claim that inhabitants experience informality as confined. Experiences of confinement are not just spatial, but also temporal, emotional, influencing cognitive capacities to plan future-life projects. As for the methodology, I combined participant observation, completed with 11 ethnographic interviews, and one semi-structured interview with an NGO activist. As a contribution to my main framework, through my empirical analysis, I bring into the framework gender experiences of confined informality. The thesis contributes to the relational framework of ‘confined informality’ and further suggests that gender is a significant social axis to be included in the understanding of confinement and informality. |
| Supervisor | Violetta Zentai, Angela Kocze |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/ramadani_sevdjulje.pdf |
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