The Inequalities and Democracy Workgroup of the CEU Democracy Institute is delighted to invite you to its public seminar.

You can check our past events here.

If you would like to attend, please register here. 

Please keep in mind that external guests will not be able to enter the building without prior registration.

The seminar starts with a 25-minute paper presentation followed by comments from the discussant. Discussion open to the audience follows. To actively take part in the discussion, please read the draft paper beforehand. The paper is available upon request.

Abstract:

This article examines the persistent failure to provide adequate compensation for the forced and coerced sterilization of Romani women in Central and Eastern Europe as a structural, rather than procedural injustice. Drawing on scholarship that conceptualizes eugenics as a scientific movement and a racialized, classed and gendered technology of power, this study situates contemporary non-compensation within the afterlife of eugenics under neoliberal governance. Despite formal recognition of sterilization as a human rights violation, limited redress reflects enduring selective reproductive logics that devalue Romani lives and reproduction. This article argues that neoliberal eugenics operates through regimes of desiredness and deservingness that position Romani women as undesired and undeserving subjects of both reproduction and reparation. These dynamics are examined through compensation schemes in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The article concludes that non-compensation constitutes a continuation of racialized and gendered reproductive governance that renders certain harms and lives unworthy of repair and justice.

Speaker:

Angéla Kóczé is Associate Professor, Chair of Romani Studies, and Academic Director of the Roma Graduate Preparation Program at Central European University in Budapest and Vienna. Her interdisciplinary work bridges scholarship, community engagement, and policy, with a focus on social inclusion, gender equality, and racial justice. She has published widely with international presses, including Palgrave Macmillan, Routledge, and CEU Press. Kóczé received the Ion Ratiu Democracy Award from the Woodrow Wilson Center in 2013 and the Beth Rickey Award from Bard’s Center for the Study of Hate in 2023. In 2025, she was honored with the Emma Goldman Snowball Award by the FLAX Foundation for her pioneering work on gendered racialization and the oppression of Roma. She is editor and co-editor of several volumes, including The Romani Women’s Movement (Routledge, 2019) and The Roma and Their Struggle for Identity in Contemporary Europe (Berghahn, 2020).

Discussant:

Conny Roggeband is Associate Professor at the Political Science Department of the University of Amsterdam and a Senior Budapest Open Society Fellow at CEU’s Institute for Advanced Study. She has written extensively on the politicization of gender-based violence, gender mainstreaming and equality policies, social movements and transnational feminist networking based on research conducted in the Netherlands, Spain and Latin America. Her current work focuses on the implications of democratic backsliding for gender equality policies in Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America.