The Shoestring Initiative, founded by Elaine J Laberge a PhD Candidate from a poverty-class heritage, is a grassroots solidarity movement creating communities of mentorship, belonging, support, intercultural connectedness, and advocacy for Canadian university students from a poverty-class heritage. This webinar is part of the String it Together: Finding Togetherness on the Education Digi-scape series. Webinar recordings of past webinars are posted on the site. For more information, contact Elaine @ elaberge@uvic.ca.
Recording of the session on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqZaq9uSmz4
Contact:
Dr. Fernando Macias Aranda
University of Barcelona
fernandomacias@ub.edu
@Fernan_Macias
What’s in a title?: Yes, we want and we can. Roma/Gypsies in Spanish Universities. This means, as Fernando explains in the video, is that yes, we want to go to school and yes, we can do it!
The situation of the Roma is still visibly alarming in Europe. Anti-Gypsy stereotypes and prejudices speak to the relentless persecution of Roma. In Spain, only 1% of Roma get a university education compared to 35% of the rest of the Spanish population. Non-Roma education “experts” explain this gap by blaming the Roma culture and perpetuating stereotypes such as an unwillingness to seek stable employment and formal education.
Roma Elders, professors, mentors and students are pushing back against this discrimination and making visible the complex barriers that Roma people face. This education gap is decreasing since the creation of www.CampusRom.org. It is the first Roma University Network of Catalonia, Spain and is an initiative by and for the Roma.
Our special guest Fernando Macías (University of Barcelona) will share how CampusRom is creating real change for Roma communities and access to higher education in Spain. @CampusRom
TWITTER @ShoestringCdn #StringitTogether #CampusRomFeb11
FREE registration: https://uvic.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUuc-2tpjMpHdFA4c3riOX4U7PZ6uvhDXDn
INFO ABOUT CAMPUSROM
Outliers imagining otherwise in and for universities (CampusRom as a case study for exploring possibilities and hope in Canadian universities for students from a poverty-heritage)
February 17, 2020, From Elaine Laberge’s doctoral candidacy: https://echoesofpoverty.com/phd-research/
CampusRom (Catalaña, Spain) The Roma of Spain have encountered violent discrimination and persecution for centuries. As Gómez et al. (2019) explain, “many people have tried to identify Roma as a problematic group and potentially criminal” (p. 2). They say that these beliefs became “official during the Third Reich” and provided justification for the mass incarceration and slaughter of the Roma people (p. 2). This discrimination has not dissipated. For instance, Roma researchers have also detected racist practices against the Roma population in the area of health, such as forced sterilization for Roma women in Eastern countries” (p. 2). Further, even today, these authors note that there are mainstream researchers who “want to deny the existence of Roma identity and to scrutinize the Roma people from the mainstream expectations of conduct” (p. 2). The discrimination against the Roma extends to exclusion from higher education in Spain. For instance, only one percent of Roma people graduate with a university degree compared to 35 percent of the rest of the Spanish population (Aranda et al., 2017, n.p.). Yet, we know that “[s]chools and communities … have a key role in reversing the cycle of inequality that the Roma suffer in Europe” (Flecha & Soler, 2013, p. 451). Making it past junior high, let alone obtaining a high school diploma, is impacted by complex historical and contemporary issues for most Roma (Aranda et al., 2017, n.p.). Formal education is not a priority; survival is the priority. To put it differently, family interconnectedness and supporting immediate and extended family members is a core part of the Roma value system. For these reasons, barriers to accessing and completing university are diverse: There is a need for youth (and the few students who make it to university) to “engage in street sales or scrap searching” and therefore often survive on “very limited incomes”; it is customary that Roma youth leave secondary school at a young age so they are ill-equipped to be successful with university entrance exams; universities are isolating places particularly for Roma people who rely on networked communities; and discrimination as a minority (Aranda, 2017, n.p.). The lack of WAP initiatives for the Roma has resulted in continued social, cultural, and economic exclusion from Spanish society. The Spanish government, in response, mandated WAP initiatives for Roma people (Aranda, 2017, n.p.). In 2016, CampusRom was formed. In essence, CampusRom is a university inside a university; it is by and for the Roma people. What is particularly unique to CampusRom is that it mirrors the Roma culture: It is built upon creating “natural networks of solidarity, a very important value within the Roma community” (Aranda, 2017, n.p.). Students receive wraparound support from Roma students and professors including group and one-on-one tutoring, confidence building, navigating university policies and procedures, finding employment, applying for scholarships and bursaries, etc. (Aranda, 2017, n.p.). This WAP initiative also focuses on family with the belief that the education of one positively impacts the well-being of all. Further, one of the foundational principles of CampusRom is that by working with universities to increase Roma student participation and success in higher education, this will improve the social, economic, and educational status of the Roma population. As such, university entrance exam training is not only for the youth. Roma learners up to 65 years of age can also benefit from CampusRom.CampusRom is founded upon six goals (roughly translated using Google translator):
- Support Roma students over 16 years of age who are in training to write university entrance exams;
- Encourage Roma students, who have studied and/or written entrance exams, to take leadership roles and mentor other students;
- Share knowledge and experience inside and outside of CampusRom to garner support and expand the CampusRom network;
- Actively engage in developing the CampusRom culture;
- Contribute to educating non-Roma people to address stereotypes, biases, and prejudices, and
- Collaborate with other networks and organizations locally, nationally, and internationally to advance the human rights of the Roma people and WAP higher education initiatives (CampusRom, 2018, https://www.campusrom.org/objectius-1).
Today, CampusRom is the first Roma university network and is expanding beyond Catalaña. The number of Roma students who have gone to CampusRom and passed their university entrance exams remains low but it is early days (Aranda, 2017, n.p.).
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