A ground-breaking volume that gathers the testimonies of NGO workers, street vendors, activists, scholars, health professionals, and creative writers to chronicle the devastating impact of COVID-19 on Romani communities globally.

The contributors reveal how the pandemic has exacerbated Romani disenfranchisement and document the resilience and creativity with which Romanies have responded to the crisis. Deploying innovative textual formats, and including poignant personal reflections, memoirs, scholarly analyses, and diary excerpts, the volume provides a roadmap for collaboration and dialogue at a time of global emergency.

This is the most significant chronicle of Romani stories about the COVID crisis ever assembled.

From the Introduction:
The contributions include memoirs, opinion essays, transcriptions of conversations or interviews, ethnographic analyses, and a compelling short story by Romani writer Iveta Kokyová, as well as pieces that stride the boundaries between one or more of these genres, or that fit into none.

Foreword: Words and Waves
Iliana Sarafian

Introduction: Chronicles of a Tragedy Foretold
Paloma Gay y Blasco and Martin Fotta

Part I: Spanish Chronicles

Chapter 1. Introduction to the Spanish Chronicles: From Ordinary Crisis to Pandemic Emergency
Paloma Gay y Blasco

Chapter 2. Gitana Intercultural Mediators in the Space between Despair and Hope
Dulce Flores Torres, Pilar García Bizárraga, Estrella Iglesias Pérez, Francisca Mayoral Silva, Manuela Mayoral Silva, Fernanda Montaño García and Paloma Gay

Chapter 3. "Who Cares...? Hunger Will Kill Us If the Virus Does Not": The COVID-19 Pandemic in an Informal Settlement in Madrid
Beatriz Aragón Martín

Chapter 4. Researching and Mitigating the Impact of Lockdown on Gitano Families in Spain: an NGO Worker Speaks
María Félix Rodriguez Camacho

Chapter 5. Illness and Death Are So Much Worse When You Are Alone
Liria Hernández

Chapter 6. "COVID-19 Is a Trial from God": Gitanos, Pentecostal Imaginaries, and Compliance
Antonio Montañés Jiménez with Gory Carmona

Part II: Brazilian Chronicles

Chapter 7. Introduction to the Brazilian Chronicles: How Systemic Racism and Government Neglect Led to Increased Harm Suffered by Vulnerable Groups
Juliana Miranda Soares Campos, Martin Fotta, Gabriela Marques Gonçalves and Aline Miklos

Chapter 8. "Get out of Here!": Discrimination and Prejudice against Ciganos in the Context of the Pandemic
Igor Shimura

Chapter 9. "Everything Is on Hold": The Pandemic and the Ciganos in Minas Gerais
Valdinalva Barbosa dos Santos Caldas and Juliana Miranda Soares Campos

Chapter 10. The Creation of the #Orgulhoromani Collective Amid the Pandemic
Gabriela Marques Gonçalves, Aluízio de Azevedo Silva Júnior, and Aline Miklos

Chapter 11. Interlacing Black and Romani Experiences during the Coronavirus Pandemic in Paraíba, Northeast Brazil: A Personal Reflection
Edilma do Nascimento Souza

Chapter 12. Romanies in Brazil and the Escalation of Necropolitics during the Pandemic
Aluízio de Azevedo Silva Júnior

Part III: Slovak Chronicles

Chapter 13. Introduction to the Slovak Chronicles: Indifference, Securitization, and Antigypsyism
Andrej Belák and TomáS Hrustic

Chapter 14. Quarantine, Segregation, and Resistance: The Case of Zehra
Alzbeta 'Halka' Mizigárová

Chapter 15. Coffee and Cigarettes in State Quarantine: Stuck on the Way Home
Albín Peter and TomáS Hrustic

Chapter 16. "In Difficult Times We Should Stick Together": Roma Self-Help Initiatives and Awareness Raising Activities as an Immediate Reaction to Corona Virus Spread Early in March 2020
TomáS Hrustic

Chapter 17. The Hoaxes and Incorrect Information Related to COVID-19 Showed a Lack of Trust and Knowledge between the Majority and the Roma
Jurina Rusnáková and Zuzana Kumanová

Chapter 18. Oh, My Antiracist Friends, Where Are You? A Health Expert's Diary of Hopes and Disappointments Regarding Pandemic Prevention and Control across Segregated Roma Enclaves
Andrej Belák

Part IV: Polish Chronicles

Chapter 19. Introduction to the Polish Chronicles: Digital Kinning and Care
Kamila Fialkowska, Michal P. Garapich, Ignacy Józwiak, Elzbieta Mirga-Wójtowicz, Sonia Styrkacz, and Monika Szewczyk

Chapter 20. Pandemic (Im)mobilities of Polish Roma
Sonia Styrkacz, Michal P. Garapich, and Kamila Fialkowska

Chapter 21. The Internet and Transnational Polish Roma Families in the Time of Pandemic
Monika Szewczyk, Elzbieta Mirga-Wójtowicz, and Ignacy Józwiak

Part V: Czech Chronicles

Chapter 22. Introduction to the Czech Chronicles: Of Loss and Silence
Yasar Abu Ghosh

Chapter 23. The Impact of the Pandemic on Activism and the Activist: Conversations with Jozef Miker
Yasar Abu Ghosh

Chapter 24. Denial of Danger: COVID-19, Disinformation, and When to Burst Our Bubbles
Gwendolyn Albert

Chapter 25. Locked Down in Our Own Personal Quarantine: How Nothing Can Be Taken for Granted
Iveta Kokyová

Concluding Reflections
Paloma Gay y Blasco and Martin Fotta

Index

Martin Fotta is a researcher at the Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences. He is the author of From Itinerant Trade to Moneylending in the Era of Financial Inclusion (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018). His current work explores transformations across the Romani diaspora of the Lusophone South Atlantic region.