"I Felt I Arrived Home": The minority trajectory of mobility for first-in-family Hungarian roma graduates

Abstract

This chapter explores the upward social mobility trajectories, and the corollary prices of them for those 45, first-in-family college educated Roma in Hungary who come from socially disadvantaged and marginalised family and community background. We argue that among the academically high-achieving participants of our study the most common upward mobility trajectory, contrary to the common belief of assimilation, is their distinctive minority mobility path which leads to their selective acculturation into the majority society. This distinctive incorporation into the mainstream is close to what the related academic scholarship calls the 'minority culture of mobility'. The three main elements of this distinct mobility trajectory among the Roma are (1) The construction of a Roma middle class identity that takes belonging to the Roma community as a source of pride, in contrast of the widespread racial stereotypes in Hungary (and all over Europe) that are closely tied to the perception of Roma as a member of the underclass, (2) The creation of grass-roots ethnic (Roma) organizations and (3) The practice of giving back to their people of origin that relegate many Roma professionals to a particular segment of the labour market, in jobs to help communities in need. However, we argue that in the case of the Hungarian Roma, these elements of the minority culture of mobility did not serve the purpose of their economic mobility as the original concepts (Neckerman et al. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22(6):945-965, 1999) posits, but to mitigate the price of changing social class and to make sense of the hardship of their social ascension.