Staging Citizenship

the long version

Based on over a decade of fieldwork conducted with urban Roma, Staging Citizenship offers a powerful new perspective on one of the European Union's most marginal and disenfranchised communities. Focusing on "performance" broadly conceived, it follows members of a squatter's settlement in Transylvania as they navigate precarious circumstances in a postsocialist state. Through accounts of music and dance performances, media representations, activism, and interactions with government agencies, author Ioana Szeman grounds broad themes of political economy, citizenship, resistance, and neoliberalism in her subjects' remarkably varied lives and experiences.