ABSTRACT
‘Visibility in Spaces Between Difference and Sameness’ explores the lived experiences of queer Roma vis-à-vis different degrees of ethnic/‘racial’ and queer visibility, including invisibility and hyper-visibility; their links to acceptance – or lack thereof; and being located within and in between sets of social relations and contexts. It considers the ethnic/‘racial’ closet, the queer closet and passing resulting from various degrees of ethnicised, ‘racialised’, sexed and gendered visibility as strategies responding to and protecting their queer Roma ‘users’ from antigypsyism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism and intersectional oppression. It also demonstrates how as mediators, bridges and in-betweens, some queer Roma seek to create commonality, and indeed, strategic sameness – a conscious, strategic, subversive take on passing as non-Roma and straight – to unsettle and challenge the assumed marked essentialist ethnic/‘racial’, sexual and gender difference. Finally, the chapter considers the notion that spaces which enable queer Roma to live and enact their intersecting ethnic/‘racial’ and queer identities are vital to being seen, heard, understood and feeling emotionally safe.
