Romanian Roma mothers: labelling and negotiating stigma

This chapter examines the position of new migrant families to the UK and how they come to be perceived as Romanian Roma; the generative and coproduced nature of labelling; the symbolic violence that is accomplished through this label; and how it comes to hold currency in the UK state apparatus. The first section of the chapter focuses on how the label developed. The second section charts how being categorised in this way led to home encounters through the particular lens on child safeguarding. The third section of this chapter considers how mothers’ understanding of their position and room for manoeuvre were shaped by their backgrounds such as illiteracy and previous experience of state violence. The chapter examines how encounters came to contribute to the mutual constitution of respective identities and how these shaped understandings of, and fears and desires for, the state.