Oulu Finland 2 6 April 2012 Oulu University of Applied Sciences School of Health and Social Care

1. The Social Situation and the Health Status of the Hungarian and Vlach Gypsy Population in TiszavasváriFónai Mihály, PhD, sociologist, associate professor, head of department (Department of Public Policy and Applied Sociology, Faculty of Law, University of Debrecen)fonai.mihaly@law.unideb.hu Oulu Finland 26 April 2012Oulu University of Applied SciencesSchool of Health and Social Care Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA) 81667. Changes – Crises – Reactions (Adaptation of local organizations of social services in peripheral countries in Europe)

2. Researches approaches and classification questions – 1. • „Cultural” and „structural” approaches: • „Cultural” approaches: e.g. cultural anthropology, ethnography, qualitative sociology – in centre the culture and identity of ethnic groups, ethnicity; „inner” approaches and interpretations • „Structural” approaches: e.g. quantitative sociology – „exterior” approach and interpretation (e.g. socio-economic and aspects of social classes ones) • „Where is the tone” and the viewpoint: the frame of the interpretation • Relationships between the two basic interpretation frames: possibility of the correlations

3. Researches approaches and classification questions – 2. • „Who are the Gypsies/ Romas?” • The cultural approach and the identity of ethnic groups: „Gypsies or Romas are who they think they are”; the inner definition • The structural approach: „Gypsies or Romas are who are the writer or speaker thinks they are”; the exterior definition • Differences among definitions and classifications • One difficult question: „which is the correct approach”?

4. Gypsy, and/or Roma? • The using of ethnic group names depends on inner or exterior definition • The inner definitions and names: - from „ROM” (men): romničal, romničel; kalo, kale, manuš or sinti(fellow-traveller, akin, relatives) - „roma”: is plural of „rom” words The exterior definitions and names: -from ατσινγανος „atsinganos” (untouchable, impalpable): cigani (South Slavian), ţiganilor (Romanian), cikáni (Bohemian), tsiganes (French), zingari (Italian), zigeuner (German), zigenaren (Swedish), ciganos (Portuguesen), zincali (Spanish) - from Egyptian: evgjit, jevg (Albanian), ejiftos, giftoi (Greek), gipćan, gupćan, egjupci (South Slavian), gitans (French), gitanos (Spanish), gipsy, gyps(Enghlis) - other names: bohémiens, ungarós , tattare, manne, mustalainen, mustilainen, kaale The using of names of Gypsy or Roma: there is not convention –it depends on political and cultural conditions

5. Roma migration in Europe(Wikipedia)

6. Roma population in Europe

7. Roma population in European countries

8. Counties in Hungary

10. Roma in Hungary(Wikipedia)

11. Gypsy ethnic groups by mother tongue in Hungary • Gypsy ethnic groups in Hungary: • „Hungarian roma”, in vlach (lovari gypsy, roma) language: „romungro” • Vlach gypsy, „oláhcigány”, in vlach (roma) language: „Roma” • „Beás” gypsy, boyas (it is oldromanian name)

12. Connection between the language spoken when they were children and the language skills recently devided by ethnical groups • *The Romungro ethnical group arrived at first to Hungary. • **Originally german speaking gypsy ethnical group. • ***Gypsy language means Olah/Vlach gypsy language to Romungro and Olah groups, and Old-romanian dialect to Beás groups.

13. Education, employment activity and poverty: the catch -22? • Why the catch -22? • Low qualifying and low employment activity: road to poverty? • What defines what? The significant role of the qualification • Effect of culture or structure? Validity of interplay interpretations: only one approach does not explain the phenomena

14. School: school failure, segregation at school, low qualification, under educated – 1. • Socialization in family (different social patterns, different norms, and its divergence from the norms of majority society and the norms of schools) • Not appropriate connection between school and family • Poor social welfare situation • Disadvantages in using the language of teaching • Absence of pre-school education • Quality of schools • Unsuitable learning motivation • Discrimination and prejudiceness • Not adequate educational practice. • Cultural explains: socialization in family

15. School: school failure, segregation at school, low qualification, under education – 2. • Segregation in schools: • The „threshold” and the prejudice of the majority population • Residential segregation • Selection between schools • Selection in the schools • The case of „Special Remedy” schools in Hungary and in the Europe

16. Employment activity • Traditional jobs, traditional employment: trade, music and handicraft to middle of 20. century. • In the age of state socialism in 70-80’ s: high employment • Low educated and qualified Romas: the losers in the post-socialist transition in the 90’ s: low and unstable employment • The invisible economy, the informal economy, strategies for living and the Roma entrepreneurs: „without the job market?” • The Romas and the job: the cultural interpretations (Jake Dick Zatta, Bernard Formoso, Michael Stewart, Szuhay Péter): the job is only one strategy for living; rejection the lease work, the significant of the separateness

17. Poverty, exclusion and the underclass • Social exclusion: • The underclass: structural or cultural interpretations? • Structural interpretations: at the bottom of social hierarchy – all those who dropped out of prosperity (e.g. Gunnar Myrdal, Charles Murray) • Cultural interpretations: „the culture of poverty” and the „welfare mentality” (e.g. Oscar Lewis, Ken Auletta) • Ethnicitization of underclass? • Underclass as multiply social exclusion: residential segregation, exclusion from the school system and the labor market (Ladányi János, Szelényi Iván) • „The changing faces of the poverty”: the ethnicitization of the poverty • Concepts of poverty: income, housing, social policy (welfare) and deprivation

18. The division of educational level of Gypsies in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg County and Hungary *From the sample of 1005 adult gypsies. **From the data of countrywide gypsy research in 1993. (Havas – Kemény, 1995)

19. Employment activity of the Roma sampled

20. Which settlement they live in (percentage) – Roma and Non-Roma underclass, Hajdúböszörmény

21. What the Roma think the greatest problems(Szabolcs-Szatmár- Bereg county Roma sample)

22. What the Roma think about when these problems would be solved

23. Tiszavasvári – the town • This small city, Tiszavasvári is located in the north-east region of Hungary, with a population of 12,800. • The city is in the poorest part of Hungary, where unemployment is high, incomes are low and the rate of the Roma population is high. • This region is traditionally an agricultural area. Since the political change in 1990, (the failure of the state-socialist system), Hungarian agriculture and those in the county who worked in connection with agriculture have been in permanent crisis. • During socialism Tiszavasvári was one of the important cities of pharmacology. The Alkaloida Chemical Factory was founded in the 1920s and it was one of the centers of morphine production. The factory located in the underdeveloped agricultural was a significant employer of low wage unskilled labor. • The factory was privatized in 1996, and until 2006 it was ICN Pharma, a plant of the International Chemical Nuclear Pharmaceuticals Inc.

24. Roma population in Tiszavasvári • There are two groups of Roma communities in the city: the Vlach Gypsies (vlach gypsies who speak the Lovari Roma language and identify by the name Roma; the Hungarian name of this ethnic group is Olah Gypsies) and the Hungarian Gypsies, who in the Lovari Roma language are called „Romungros”. This latter group traditionally called themselves „musician” Gypsies. • The results of an overall research project by Lengyel Gabriella (Lengyel, 2004) identified that 2,008 Gypsies live in Tiszavasvári. • Two thirds of them are Vlach Gypsies, that is Roma, and one third are Hungarian Gypsies, Romungro. • In this research the term „Gypsy” will be used typically and the other names will be used when comparing the situation of the two Gypsy groups.

25. The framework of the research Following the format of the 2005 research coordinated by the Szocio East Association this study took the following dimensions into consideration: • The socio-demographic indicators of the household (number of members, spouse, their distribution according to gender, age composition, school education, economic activity) • The income situation of the households, source of the income, and types of expenditures • The problems of the households/families, and their support systems • the subjective health state of the person, their spouse, family members, use of the health support system, health complaints, illnesses and mental state • Opinions and expectations about the small city • In this study the concepts „household” and „family” are basically synonymous. There are two reasons for this (1) respondents themselves do not differentiate the terms and (2) pervious experiences conducting research on Roma living in family-households. • interviewers were able to visit 300 households and from those a total of 284 were complete.

26. The distribution of the respondents according to their family status Source: Own survey

27. Group self-classification • Two primary methods were used to classify the ethnic groups of Gypsies, self- classification by the Gypsies themselves • and the views of those experts who are in daily connection with the Roma/Gypsies. The interviewers judged that the respondents were not Roma in nine cases (3.2%), and in five cases (1.8 %) they were uncertain regarding the ethnic classification. Thus 95.1 % of the visited households on the base of the interviewers’ classification were Gypsy households • There was no difference between the external classification by the interviewers and self-classification by the Gypsies • The Vlach Gypsy community (lovari) are bilingual, their mother tongue is Gypsy but they speak in Hungarian as well.

28. The distribution of the heads of families according to school education (percent) *: Results of 1993 Roma research **: Own survey concerning Roma population in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county ***: National data concerning the whole population ****: 2005 survey in Roma households in Tiszavasvári

29. The distribution of the heads of families according to economic activity (percent) * :Roma households, N=1005 **: N=284 ***: Registered and non-registered together Source: Own survey

30. The distribution of the household members according to age groups (percent) Source: own survey(*) and census(**)

31. The age distribution of the household members by ethnic groups (percent)

32. The distribution of the household members according to school education *: with Children **: Census 2001, seven-year old and older population

33. The distribution of the household members according to economic activity (percent) Source: own survey(*) and the county data of the 2001 census(**)

34. What education would you like to have (percent) Source: Own survey

35. What education would you like for your children to have (percent) Source: Own survey

37. Reasons for dropping out (percent) Source: Own survey

38. The comfort level of the households according to their occurrence (percent)

39. How the households are supplied on the base of the frequency of the occurrence (percent)

40. Occurence of income types in households (percent)

41. Average incomes according to the source of the incomes • In the city the Roma households’ average income per month is 65,969 HUF. In 2004 income per household among the county’s Roma population was 60,169 HUF. In April 2005 when the survey was performed the exchange rate for the US dollar was 190 HUF or $317-342 per household per month or $ 2.48 per person per day. • The relative poverty line was ½ of that or 30,061 HUF. From income indicators based upon self admission 96% of the Tiszavasvári Gypsy population lives below the relative poverty line. • According to the Gypsies they would need 187,588 HUF per month per family to be able to live without problems. It would mean 40,169 HUF per person per month

42. The expenditures of the households in HUF per month

43. What do you think your own health condition is like? (The subjective indicator of the health state on a ten-point scale) Source:own data registration. 2003: N=1452 (from this Roma: 119), 2004: N=500 2003 (Roma – non Roma) P≤0,092, Chí-square: 14.968, Df: 9

45. Frequency of use („When did you or your family member use the following?) (percent)

46. Frequency of use („When did you or your family member use the following?) • From among primary health care providers visiting a dentist’s is very rare. According to other research the reason is that a part of dental services are not free. This is why the predominance and the preventive interventions are much more frequent because they are free. • Corresponding to national tendencies, Gypsy women living in the city more often use health services than men, but they are predominantly related to pregnancy and baby care. It is true that it means a guarantee to the more active use of gynacological cancer screening as well. • In case of the recent not compulsory screenings, primarily in case of lung screening it can be seen that there is a big part of the Gypsy population, about one third (33%) of the population that do not go to lung screenings (because of bad and crowded housing conditions lung problems are a serious public health problem). • On the base of the frequency indicators of medical examinations, measurement of blood pressure, ECG it is possible that one fifth or one fourth of the city’s Gypsy population have serious health problems.

47. Status regarding screenings on a five-point scale

48. What diseases, complaints of were treated during the past three years

49. What diseases, complaints of were treated during the past three years • „Civilization diseases”, high blood pressure and motion diseases – in both of their underlying way of life and their living conditions can be found. For high blood pressure the possibilities of prevention, for example, are low due to the „strict limits” of poverty. • The high rate of the cardiovascular diseases partly corresponds to the national trends, but the influence from their way of living and living conditions is possible here too. • Asthma, respiratory diseases and allergy are health problems where the living conditions of the Gypsy population are important. The rate of these diseases and complaints show that these types of illinesses are significantly affected by living conditions and their way of life. • The cause of the high occurrence of neurological and mental problems can be from permanent stress which is a result of different forms of deprivation and poverty.

50. The judgement of the standard of services and treatment (on a five-point scale)