La Chaire de recherche du Canada sur les identités juridiques et culturelles nord-américaines et comparées est heureuse d’annoncer la tenue de la conférence de Mme Jarmila Lajcakova sur le thème suivant:

Accommodating Romani National Minority through a Non-Territorial Autonomy within the Boundaries of Existing Nation States.

Résumé

The paper advances an institutional proposal of a non-territorial autonomy for the Roma in the context of Slovakia. The proposed model sanctions the existence of some parallel Romani institutions and the inclusion of the Roma in the overarching system of state governance.

I take as my point of departure, a concept of national cultural autonomy (NCA) indigenous to the studied region, which was developed by the Austro-Marxists Karl Renner and Otto Baer at the turn of the twentieth century. NCA, based on the personality principle, promises active involvement of nationalities in multi-level governance regimes in broadly defined cultural and socio-economic affairs. NCA is unique since it enables the Roma to participate in setting the parameters for the legal protection of their communities; however, it also tends to privilege national belonging over other sources of individual identities. This feature of NCA may exaggerate the boundaries between communities and, in turn, can increase the existing socio-economic and gender-based inequalities.
To mitigate these serious shortcomings, I draw on a joint-governance model called ‘transformative accommodation’ (TA) advanced by Ayelet Shachar. TA is based on horizontal power sharing, splitting the jurisdiction between the state and the minority in diverse legal arenas. Neither the group nor the state assumes absolute control over the entire legal arena. Rather, transformative accommodation splits the jurisdiction between the state and the minority in diverse legal arenas. This division within a certain legal domain creates a circulation of powers between the two entities and stimulates their ongoing interactions. These interactions are further strengthened by an individual’s right to opt out of the jurisdiction of the group, and they provide an incentive for the state and the minority group to transform norms in the different legal domains in a way that respects their various affiliations. The potential of this transformative effect on the norms underpinning mainstream institutions is salient to facilitate Romani inclusion and critical in both advancing the socio-economic and cultural empowerment of this group. The paper explains how Romani autonomy based on NCA and TA would affect affirmative action redistributive policies and the determination of group membership. I also outline how the principles embodied in both NCA and transformative accommodation can provide useful guidance in facilitating Romani autonomy through the example of Romani education.

Spécialiste des questions relatives au droit des minorités et avocate en Slovaquie, Mme Lajcakova détient une maîtrise et un doctorat en droit de l’Université de Toronto.

La conférence aura lieu le vendredi 19 janvier, à 12h15, au Salon des professeurs de la Faculté de droit de l’Université de Montréal, situé au local A-3464, 3101 chemin de la Tour, Montréal.