Klára Vomastková - Theorizing EthniCity

In the current academic discourse, Ethnicity is considered as a social construct (see for example Barth, Brubaker, Puskác); there is a common view among researchers that ethnicity is not a natural condition or natural essence but something that is created and kept through social interactions. In researching ethnicity, I would like to follow Brubaker, according to whom race and ethnicity exist just through our perception, representation, classification, categorization and identification (Brubaker 2004). Ethnicity is therefore done and performed by particular agents in various situations, when we perceive and categorize people or places. Various agents can also experience ethnicity differently, depending on their social location within power hierarchies and interlocking inequalities (see Herbert 2008:6).
City does not represent only a physical space but also the society living in this space. We can characterize city as a dynamic social space and social structure where various cultural innovations can originate (see Ferenčuhová 2009). When we consider urban space in this way, we can explore various social processes connected with ethnic differentiation, symbolic boundary creation and power-relations and creating inequalities in our society. When we consider recent Czech history, there is quite a significant change between the Czech socialist city and post-socialist city. These changes are connected with the processes of social and economic transformation; migration and formation of what some scholars called “new inequalities” during the 90's. These changes are also connected with the new ways of urban space differentiation where ethnicity and social capital became most important factors.
In current Czech politic and academic discourses, there is a big interest especially in the growing processes of Roma space segregation and ghettoization which are apparent both in the urban and rural space. The majority of Roma people in the Czech Republic (or in other countries of Eastern and Central Europe) deal with poverty and live at social margins of the society which can be symbolized by ethnically segregated and socially deprived city quarters downtown or by dormitories for poor people at the city periphery.
Ostrava is presented as a big city with the highest population of the Roma in the Czech Republic (see Navrátil 2003, Veryvision 2008). The growth of the city is tightly bound with its development of heavy and mining industry which influenced the general character and image of Ostrava. This caused a need for a higher population and unskilled laborers which led to the migration waves within Czechoslovakia after the Second World War. During the fifties, there was a migration of Roma people from Slovakia initiated by the communist state due to the labor empowerment of industrial regions and Roma assimilation conceptions especially in case of Eastern Slovakia (elimination of traditional Roma settlements) (Pavelčíková 2004). During 60's and 70' there was a big increase of Roma population in Ostrava especially due to the follow-up migration (family members) and high natality.
The character of the city is typical for its leap industrialization in very diversified and dispersed self-contained districts of the city which are typical for various historical and social contexts, manners of housing and living (Navrátil 2003). The dynamics of the city development is therefore connected with significant changes in population structure and formation of places – districts or streets – which are typical for their gradual decline of infrastructure, concentration of poor Roma inhabitants who lost their jobs in city industrial factories during the 90s.
In my research project I would like to focus on a particular quarter of the city which is often characterized as ghettoized and ethnically segregated (Temelová, Víšek 2007). The processes of constructing boundaries – spatial, symbolic and social – between inhabitants of the stigmatized locality and other city residents can have many forms.I would like to concentrate on the local context formation of “Roma schools” which are connected with the processes of ghettoization and boundary construction. I would like to make use of some findings and data of the international comparative research Edumigrom where I took part as a researcher and develop some of these topics at the seminar.

Literature
Brubaker, R. (2004). Ethnicity without Groups. Cambridge: Harvard Press 2004.
Ferenčuhová, S (Eds.). 2009. Město: proměnlivá ne/samozřejmost . Červený kostelec: Pavel Merhart.
Herbert, J. 2008. Negotiating Boundaries in the City: Migration, Ethnicity and Gender in Britain. Queen Mary, University of London, UK.
Pavelčíková, N. 2004. Romové v českých zemích v letech 1945-1989. Praha: Úřad dokumentace a vyšetřování zločinů komunismu.
Sýkora L., Temelová, J. (Eds.) 2005. Prevence prostorové segregace. Praha: Univerzita Karlova v Praze, Přírodověděcká fakulta, katedra sociální geografie a regionálního rozvoje.
VeryVision 2008. Sociálně demografická analýza Slezké Ostravy s přihlédnutím k tzv. sociálně vyloučeným lokalitám. Final report. August 2008.