Short-term ethnography and women’s voices: Insights from fieldwork with Roma communities

In this paper we explore the potential of short-term ethnography in a collaborative and participatory research project on experiences with and perceptions of migration from fieldwork with Roma groups in north-western Transylvania. We discuss particularly the challenges we encountered in engaging Roma women in terms of existing cultural and gender norms evident in some Roma communities. We argue that, in the context of working with women in patriarchal communities, short-term ethnography offers researchers a unique opportunity to a) find and take advantage of safe spaces in which to talk to women and b) manage sensitively access and rapport. In this study, ethnography gave insights into alternative ways of engagement in the research process based on categorizations that emphasise alternative aspects of social identity (Roma “mothers” vs Roma “women”) as an effective means of breaking down some of the barriers to participation. Finally, we argue that short-term ethnography can be used successfully in collaborative and participatory research projects alongside traditional ethnographic work to explore the perspectives of mobile and vulnerable or marginalised groups including, but not limited to, patriarchal group contexts.