Portugal is to have a new national study on Roma communities, not only to quantify but also to characterize them, which is due to start in May, is expected to last two years and will be drawn up by an academic consortium.
The study is funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), following a public tender in which the project presented by the Institute of Sociology of the Faculty of Letters of Porto and the Center for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES) of ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon won.
Speaking to the Lusa news agency, Maria Manuela Mendes, from the CIES team, said that the study should start soon, in principle in May, taking into account that the deadline for other projects to contest the outcome of the competition is still pending.
The researcher said that the aim is to “carry out a new study on the Roma population” after the previous one was published in 2014, and to update the diagnosis and knowledge about Roma communities.
“Until we move forward on other fronts, namely a more in-depth historical knowledge of the presence of Roma people in Portugal, which is something that is not very developed and there is not much knowledge produced in this regard,” he explained.
Maria Manuela Mendes said that the project has been funded for two years and that it is expected to be completed by May 2026. She said that there will be partial results that will be disseminated, as well as publications and events to present and discuss the results, which will include organizations, activists and members of the Roma community.
According to the researcher, the study will include projects with the Roma community, which will “provide a kind of consultancy to the project”, as well as two national surveys, covering the mainland and the islands.
“There’s going to be a survey of the Portuguese Roma population, with a fairly large sample, and also a survey of the non-Roma population about the Roma, about their representations of the Roma population,” he said.
He added that there will be a qualitative component of in-depth and ethnographic work “in some communities that experience more complicated and possibly more precarious housing situations in different areas of the country”.
He said that the study will seek to find out how many Roma people live in Portugal, but will also have “a qualitative component, with interviews, life stories” and sociological portraits of “some profiles of Roma people and families”.
Maria Manuela Mendes stressed that this historical component will have “a lot of emphasis”, while there will also be components such as participatory workshops with Roma people and exhibitions.
“I think it’s going to be a very interesting job,” he said.
The first, and so far only, national study on Roma communities, commissioned by the High Commission for Migration, carried out in 2014, based on interviews with 1,599 Roma people, revealed that Portuguese Roma had low levels of education, married early and made street vending their main economic activity.
