I am a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Central European University. My research is situated within two fields of study: critical migration/citizenship studies and the tradition of political economy within anthropology, with a particular focus on class and citizenship dynamics amongst the Romani minority of postsocialist Hungary. The last decade has borne witness to thousands of Hungarian Roma seeking asylum protection in Canada, where Hungary currently figures as one of the leading refugee-sending countries. I use the study of Romani marginalization and migration as an entry-point for making sense of how the parameters of class and citizenship are being redrawn in the current global system and what these reconfigurations reveal about the value regimes of contemporary capitalism. I do this by way of a multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork project in Miskolc, Hungary, and Toronto, Canada.
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
political economy; class; citizenship; critical border and migration studies; global ethnography; Gramsci; postsocialism in Hungary; Hungarian Roma and Romani mobility
E-MAIL: swerdlyk_sara@phd.ceu.edu