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Conference Report edited by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Brussels, 2015. Co-authors Alison Woodw... more Conference Report edited by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Brussels, 2015. Co-authors Alison Woodward and Serena D'Agostino.
International Conference “The European Union In International Affairs V”, jointly organized by IES-VUB, IEE-ULB, UNU-CRIS, Egmont Institute, Brussels – Belgium, 11-13 May 2016, 2016
Although intersectionality has largely been theorized, research categorizing intersectional equal... more Although intersectionality has largely been theorized, research categorizing intersectional equality policies is still relatively little developed. To which extent are equality policies in the European Union (EU) intersectionality-oriented? How is intersectionality operationalized in policies? Existing literature answers these questions by focusing essentially on the institutional mechanisms resulting from the operationalization process, like laws and equality bodies. This paper aims at enhancing the traditional categorization of (multiple and/or) intersectional equality policies by adding less-institutional criteria, like the presence of an “intersectional vocabulary” in both policy and legislative documents and the implementation efforts of national governments for supporting specific groups “at intersections”. Policies towards Roma1 women in the new Central and Eastern European Member States (CEEMS) are used as test-cases to check the reliability of the proposed “new” criteria set.
The EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies up to 2020 has recently turned five. As... more The EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies up to 2020 has recently turned five. As for any anniversary worthy of the name, a general assessment of both the first results and the necessary steps forward needs to be made. This Policy Brief investigates the progress attained by the EU Framework in relation to a specific component of so-called Roma integration policies, i.e. the gender dimension. Recognized as one of the 10 Common Basic Principles on Roma Inclusion in 2009, the Awareness of the gender dimension does not yet play a significant role in the design, implementation and evaluation of Roma-related policies. Rather, it seems to have gradually faded in recent years’ EU policy-making on Roma inclusion, being relegated to the more featureless category of horizontal policy measure and/or crosscutting issue.
Conference Report edited by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Brussels, 2015. Co-authors Alison Woodw... more Conference Report edited by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Brussels, 2015. Co-authors Alison Woodward and Serena D'Agostino.
International Conference “The European Union In International Affairs V”, jointly organized by IES-VUB, IEE-ULB, UNU-CRIS, Egmont Institute, Brussels – Belgium, 11-13 May 2016, 2016
Although intersectionality has largely been theorized, research categorizing intersectional equal... more Although intersectionality has largely been theorized, research categorizing intersectional equality policies is still relatively little developed. To which extent are equality policies in the European Union (EU) intersectionality-oriented? How is intersectionality operationalized in policies? Existing literature answers these questions by focusing essentially on the institutional mechanisms resulting from the operationalization process, like laws and equality bodies. This paper aims at enhancing the traditional categorization of (multiple and/or) intersectional equality policies by adding less-institutional criteria, like the presence of an “intersectional vocabulary” in both policy and legislative documents and the implementation efforts of national governments for supporting specific groups “at intersections”. Policies towards Roma1 women in the new Central and Eastern European Member States (CEEMS) are used as test-cases to check the reliability of the proposed “new” criteria set.
The EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies up to 2020 has recently turned five. As... more The EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies up to 2020 has recently turned five. As for any anniversary worthy of the name, a general assessment of both the first results and the necessary steps forward needs to be made. This Policy Brief investigates the progress attained by the EU Framework in relation to a specific component of so-called Roma integration policies, i.e. the gender dimension. Recognized as one of the 10 Common Basic Principles on Roma Inclusion in 2009, the Awareness of the gender dimension does not yet play a significant role in the design, implementation and evaluation of Roma-related policies. Rather, it seems to have gradually faded in recent years’ EU policy-making on Roma inclusion, being relegated to the more featureless category of horizontal policy measure and/or crosscutting issue.
The 'EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies up to 2020' has recently turned five. ... more The 'EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies up to 2020' has recently turned five. As for any anniversary worthy of the name, a general assessment of both the first results and the necessary steps forward needs to be made. This Policy Brief investigates the progress attained by the EU Framework in relation to a specific component of so-called Roma integration policies, i.e. the gender dimension. Recognized as one of the '10 Common Basic Principles on Roma Inclusion' in 2009, the 'Awareness of the gender dimension' does not yet play a significant role in the design, implementation and evaluation of Roma-related policies. Rather, it seems to have gradually faded in recent years’ EU policy-making on Roma inclusion, being relegated to the more featureless category of 'horizontal policy measure' and/or 'crosscutting issue'.
Conference Report edited by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Brussels, 2015. Co-authors Alison Woodw... more Conference Report edited by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Brussels, 2015. Co-authors Alison Woodward and Serena D'Agostino.
Building on extant literature on the Europeanization of social movements, this Paper investigates... more Building on extant literature on the Europeanization of social movements, this Paper investigates a quite overlooked and understudied type of 'intersectional mobilization' (Terriquez 2015), i.e. Romani Women Activism. Throughout a cross-national (qualitative) comparative analysis using Romania and Bulgaria as case-studies, this work means to understand to what extent Romani women activists can influence the Europeanization process depending on the ways they are able and/or willing to use (the same kind of) EU-driven opportunities. In particular, it first identifies a set of common political opportunities for mobilization created by the EU (i.e. top-down dimension) in the two countries and then analyzes the (political) usage domestic minority activists make of them (i.e. bottom-up dimension).
Preliminary findings emerging from the data collected via semi-structured interviews conducted in both Romania and Bulgaria in 2015 and 2016 show that the impact of the EU intervention on this form of 'activism at intersections' (Kruckenberg 2010) varies significantly depending on the ways domestic (Romani women) activists react to EU-induced stimuli.
Inspired by the concept of 'usage' employed by political sociology, and especially by extant research on the ‘usage of Europe’ (see, among others, Jacquot & Woll 2003; Woll & Jacquot 2010), this study contributes to the emerging literature on the Europeanization of social movements in general, and the Europeanization of intersectional mobilization in particular.
This paper investigates the process of Europeanization of Romani Women Activism in Romania and Bu... more This paper investigates the process of Europeanization of Romani Women Activism in Romania and Bulgaria by exploring both its top-down and bottom-up dimensions. Namely, it first identifies a set of common political opportunities for mobilization created by the EU (i.e. top-down dimension) in the two countries and then analyzes the (political) usage domestic minority activists make of them (i.e. bottom-up dimension). Throughout a cross-national (qualitative) comparative analysis, this study means to understand to what extent the Europeanization process can have different outcomes depending on the way Romani women activists are able and/or willing to use (the same kind of) EU-driven opportunities. Preliminary findings emerging from the data collected in both Romania and Bulgaria show that the “impact” of the EU intervention on Romani women mobilization varies significantly depending on the ways domestic activists “react” to EU-induced stimuli. Inspired by the concept of usage employed by political sociology, and in particular by extant research on the ‘usage of Europe’ (see, among others, Jacquot & Woll 2003; Woll & Jacquot 2010), this study contributes to the emerging literature on the Europeanization of social movements, as well as to current research on bottom-up Europeanization in Central and Eastern European Member States (CEEMS) – so far mainly focused on top-down models.
Starting from my previous investigation conducted in Romania, this paper intends to propose a cro... more Starting from my previous investigation conducted in Romania, this paper intends to propose a cross-national (qualitative) comparative analysis of the EU-driven opportunities for Romani women activists in Romania and Bulgaria. The broader scope of the comparison is to inductively explore whether/to what extent the process of EUropeanization can have different evolution and outcomes depending on the domestic institutional setting and the (political) choices made by national non-state actors. This main question builds on the initial assumptions that (i) the relative openness (or closure) of the institutionalized political system can create, foster or hinder new opportunities for collective action during its entire lifespan, from its emergence to its development to its eventual decline (McAdam et al. 1996; Travaglino 2014), and that (ii) the way non-state actors decide/are able to use nationally- and/or internationally-driven opportunities can finally result in different policy and political configurations: actors need to seize [opportunities] in order to transform them into political practices (Jacquot & Woll 2003: 4). By comparing the ways Romanian and Bulgarian Romnja activists react to the political opportunity structures (POS) created by the EU, this work means to (inductively) unpack the core mechanisms of the EUropeanization process, thus contributing to the current research on bottom-up Europeanization in Central and Eastern European Member States (CEEMS) – so far mainly focused on top-down models.
This article explores the EUropeanization of Romani women intersectional mobilization in Romania ... more This article explores the EUropeanization of Romani women intersectional mobilization in Romania through a bottom-up investigation of the political opportunities for Romani women activists and related organizations created by the EU during the whole accession period (i.e. pre- and post- 2007), both at the national and transnational levels. It defines EUropeanization as a multi-directional (top-down, bottom-up, vertical, and horizontal) process of interplay between the EU and (intersectional) minority activists.
Building on previous research on the Europeanization of social movement and political opportunity structures (POS) for mobilization, this contribution identifies eight types of (EU-driven) opportunities, five at the national and three at the transnational level. In order to assess the EUropeanization process and investigate whether the EU fosters the formation and/or development of Romanian Romani women (intersectional) activism, it further proposes a categorization of the identified POS as durable/sustainable, temporary, single-strand and multi-strand/intersectional.
Based on data collected through policy documents, semi-structured interviews with Romanian institutional and non-institutional actors, and relevant organizations’ websites, this work contributes to the literature on the Europeanization of social movements – which typically focuses on single-strand forms of mobilization. Indeed, whereas some attention can be detected in relation to both the women movement (Císar & Vráblíková 2010) and the Romani movement (Harper & Vermeersch 2006; Vermeersch 2006) separately, the civic engagement of Romani women as an intersectional group of activists is still marginalized in Europeanization research.
The List of 84 Selected Abstracts for 2015 Gypsy Lore Society Annual Meeting and Conference on Gy... more The List of 84 Selected Abstracts for 2015 Gypsy Lore Society Annual Meeting and Conference on Gypsy/Romani Studies (Chisinau, Republic of Moldova, 10-12 September 2015).
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Papers by Serena D'Agostino
This Policy Brief investigates the progress attained by the EU Framework in relation to a specific component of so-called Roma integration policies, i.e. the gender dimension. Recognized as one of the '10 Common Basic Principles on Roma Inclusion' in 2009, the 'Awareness of the gender dimension' does not yet play a significant role in the design, implementation and evaluation of Roma-related policies. Rather, it seems to have gradually faded in recent years’ EU policy-making on Roma inclusion, being relegated to the more featureless category of 'horizontal policy measure' and/or 'crosscutting issue'.
Preliminary findings emerging from the data collected via semi-structured interviews conducted in both Romania and Bulgaria in 2015 and 2016 show that the impact of the EU intervention on this form of 'activism at intersections' (Kruckenberg 2010) varies significantly depending on the ways domestic (Romani women) activists react to EU-induced stimuli.
Inspired by the concept of 'usage' employed by political sociology, and especially by extant research on the ‘usage of Europe’ (see, among others, Jacquot & Woll 2003; Woll & Jacquot 2010), this study contributes to the emerging literature on the Europeanization of social movements in general, and the Europeanization of intersectional mobilization in particular.
Throughout a cross-national (qualitative) comparative analysis, this study means to understand to what extent the Europeanization process can have different outcomes depending on the way Romani women activists are able and/or willing to use (the same kind of) EU-driven opportunities.
Preliminary findings emerging from the data collected in both Romania and Bulgaria show that the “impact” of the EU intervention on Romani women mobilization varies significantly depending on the ways domestic activists “react” to EU-induced stimuli.
Inspired by the concept of usage employed by political sociology, and in particular by extant research on the ‘usage of Europe’ (see, among others, Jacquot & Woll 2003; Woll & Jacquot 2010), this study contributes to the emerging literature on the Europeanization of social movements, as well as to current research on bottom-up Europeanization in Central and Eastern European Member States (CEEMS) – so far mainly focused on top-down models.
Building on previous research on the Europeanization of social movement and political opportunity structures (POS) for mobilization, this contribution identifies eight types of (EU-driven) opportunities, five at the national and three at the transnational level. In order to assess the EUropeanization process and investigate whether the EU fosters the formation and/or development of Romanian Romani women (intersectional) activism, it further proposes a categorization of the identified POS as durable/sustainable, temporary, single-strand and multi-strand/intersectional.
Based on data collected through policy documents, semi-structured interviews with Romanian institutional and non-institutional actors, and relevant organizations’ websites, this work contributes to the literature on the Europeanization of social movements – which typically focuses on single-strand forms of mobilization. Indeed, whereas some attention can be detected in relation to both the women movement (Císar & Vráblíková 2010) and the Romani movement (Harper & Vermeersch 2006; Vermeersch 2006) separately, the civic engagement of Romani women as an intersectional group of activists is still marginalized in Europeanization research.