'Autonomy Documented on the Margin'. Critical Processing of the Records of the Roma Parliament and the Roma Civil Rights Foundation

Visegrad Lecture Series

'Autonomy Documented on the Margin'. Critical Processing of the Records of the Roma Parliament and the Roma Civil Rights Foundation

by Aladár Horváth, civil right movement researcher

In the first part of the presentation, the research objectives and background, personal involvement, and the connection to the Archivum will be highlighted. The second part of the presentation introduces the research project. The research is based on documents found in the Archivum, with particular attention to the complete records of the Roma Parliament and the Roma Civil Rights Foundation (RPA), as well as the relevant video documents of the Black Box Foundation.

The starting hypothesis: the civil rights movement is indeed capable of active and effective participation within the framework of a liberal rule-of-law state. At the same time, the ‘Roma problem’ was a matter of internal affairs and national security even during the post-communist ‘golden age of Hungarian democracy’ (1989–2010): elected Roma representation could function under the state’s control and influence. The ‘democracy experiment’ of the Third Hungarian Republic also offered the Roma civil rights movement the opportunity to participate as one of the autonomous pillars of Hungarian rule of law in the social oversight of power through its professional legal protection, crisis management, and advocacy activities.

The documents found in the Archivum may support the assumption that the 'only legitimate political representation' of the Roma, the development of a modern (lovable and respectable) Roma identity, was not provided by the local and national Roma self-governments, as the 'sole custodians of cultural autonomy,' but rather by civil rights organizations independent of the state both financially and organizationally, with a liberal (human rights, anti-discrimination) approach, utilizing legal and public tools at a high level. To support this assumption, the presenter will introduce RPA's struggles in realizing the constitutional right to housing free from discrimination and exclusion.

He is convinced that the research methodology, along with contextualized and critical engagement with sources, may contribute to the interpretation of other Roma-related collections preserved in the Archivum and to the development of an authentic Roma community memory and historiography.

The presentation may followed online on Zoom:

https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/91299097034?pwd=GuYK1oqUT8ZZRLA3amgQNQQ1KLmeE9.1

Meeting ID: 912 9909 7034

Passcode: 315067