Conference Program

During recent years, for the first time in Icelandic history, a relatively stable and conspicuous community of Roma (mostly from Romania) has formed in Reykjavík, the capital area. This paper presents the materials that emerged from the research project RomÍs: History and ethnography of Roma people in Iceland. In particular, it focuses on the results of an investigation conducted among personnel at Reykjavík elementary schools in the period 2022-24.

Together with social workers, the personnel of Reykjavík's schools represented the main point of contact between the newly emerged Roma community and Icelandic institutions. The paper explores the process of (gradual) “discovery” of the Roma pupils in Icelandic classrooms. It also traces the dynamics that framed the encounter between teachers and school personnel, on the one hand, and Roma pupils and their families, on the other. It will be argued that Roma built their approaches with Icelandic schools on their previous experience with other non-Roma institutions (in Romania and other countries of migration). Icelandic teachers and other professionals, instead, had no previous experience of encounter with Roma and felt lacking in knowledge and know-how to approach Roma pupils and families properly.

While fearing reproducing in Icelandic schools the inequalities and discrimination that target most Roma in Europe, many Icelandic teachers and professionals involved in the reception of Roma pupils and families manifested a mix of curiosity and unease towards what they perceived a Roma specific social, economic, and cultural background. In doing so, they mirrored stereotypical images existing in Icelandic collective imagery, which portray Roma as exotic, fascinating but also unsettling Others. Some also got in contact with bluntly negative stereotypes, which they accessed not only through mass and social media, but also through direct interactions with migrants and foreign institutions, whose “indoctrination” (cfr. Zembylas, 2022) on Roma-related issues risked poisoning educational settings.

So far, contrary to most European countries (cfr. Lauritzen and Nodeland, 2018), Roma in Iceland are not faced with the reproduction of inequalities in educational settings, neither at the hands of school personnel nor of non-Roma pupils. This is also because teachers and professionals involved in the reception of Roma children and families cultivated a critical, reflexive stance towards their own assumptions and practices. This situation, however, is fragile as anti-Gypsyism might find fertile soil to grow. This paper thus reflects on the reasons behind the Icelandic peculiarity, as well as on the ever-present risk that educational settings end up mirroring and socialising societal distinctions, hierarchies, and racialization processes.