Historical memory, identity and minorities : An action-research project with Roma and Sinti young people.

The text begins with a reflection on the role of history in the construction of the identity of young people belonging to the Roma and Sinti community. The incipit is given by an international project (TRACER), financed by European funds, on the theme of the memory of the genocide of the Roma people (Porrajmos) during the Second World War, officially recognised only at the end of the 1990s. History has not only the function of storytelling but also that of supporting collective memory. Remembering, for any individual, means ‘re-actualising the memory of a social group to which he or she belongs or has belonged in the past’ (Jedlowski 1987, 26), and constructing, over time, a group identity that is the result of a temporal construction in which the dimensions of the past, present and future are combined (Halbwachs 1987). In our historical period, which is essentially focused on the present, the past helps to read the everyday experienced reality and to give a new orientation to future perspectives. This is even more important if the past concerns minority communities, such as those of Roma and Sinti, whose history is the fruit of a denied narrative, since it is based on relations of hostility, exclusion, marginalisation and ghettoisation from majority societies and cultures. The text also explains the construction and steps of the participatory action-research with young Roma and Sinti from 3 European countries involved.