Chapter 5: To Be Roma, to Be Disabled: Management of Ethnic Identity and Disability

The education system in postsocialist Hungary is deeply segregated, particularly for the Hungarian Roma (Gyspy) ethnic minority. Roma students are often considered to be a problem because of their minority status, poverty level, or because they have a diagnosed disability. These three markers of disadvantage are often conflated such that disability is strongly associated with poor economic status and minority ethnicity, and to be Roma is to be both poor and disabled. This chapter focuses particularly on the conflation of Roma ethnic identity and disability, particularly mental and intellectual disability. Education researchers have noted that in the past three decades, the rates of diagnosed mental disability in Hungary have been disproportionately high, and the disparity is seen most predominately in regions with high proportions of Roma. Children commonly received a diagnosis of some form of mental or intellectual disability which purportedly necessitates enrollment in schools for the mentally disabled or catch-up classes. Such a practice serves to maintain segregated education while obscuring the ethnicized reasons behind such segregation. Drawing upon ethnographic research in several educational institutions and educational nongovernmental organizations in Hungary, this chapter explores how disability is a label used to manage the Roma. Labeling children as mentally disabled effectively cuts off educational and employment opportunities later in life and implicates parents for not teaching or properly socializing their children.