The Network Expression of a Roma Diaspora

Abstract

Despite the longstanding debates among ethnographers and policymakers regarding the social organization of the Roma–the largest and most marginalized native ethnocultural minority in Europe–quantitative analyses are limited. This is partly due to a unique combination of social closure and spatial dispersion of most Roma groups, exacerbated by their recent massive migration from Central and Eastern Europe. Here, we implement a novel methodology that draws on Roma’s migration networks and ethnicity- and kin-centred social norms, which enforce a permanent contact with their close ones, often facilitated by online social media like Facebook. We combine snowball sampling and a questionnaire about four ‘top friends’, as ranked by the Facebook algorithm, to elicit a sociocentric network of a comparatively large group of self-identified Roma originating in a Romanian area (n = 752, 96% living outside Romania). Our analysis indicates that the elicited network displays a notable similarity to the social structure of the target population in terms of kinship, subethnic group affiliation, gender roles and other characteristics. The detected patterns provide a quantitative evaluation of the qualitative ethnographic research on the Roma, thereby opening new avenues for research on this and other hard-to-reach populations.