Roma people are the most numerous and most disadvantaged of all ethnic minority groups
living in contemporary Central and Eastern Europe. The use of the category of Roma
varies a great deal in Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. While the stereotypes, attitudes
and prejudices concerning the Roma minority suggest the presence of a highly homogenised
and unified group, the actual population meant by the category of Roma varies according
to the nature of the encounter. Moreover, not only do members of the non‐Roma majority
fail to agree who is Roma and who is not Roma, but there is no match between the results
of the outgroup and ingroup categorisation. This mismatch is especially striking in
Hungary. Explanatory models presented in this paper show differences in the structure
of sociological determinants of categorisation between the three countries studied.
As far as the nature of outgroup categorisation is concerned, the study showed that,
compared to the general level of prejudice of the population, the anti‐Gypsy prejudice
is significantly less intense among the non‐Roma interviewers in the survey, whose
task was to categorise the respondents, but interviewers cannot be considered to have
no anti‐Gypsy bias altogether.
