Revisiting Recognition and Redistribution and Extending the Borders : Júlia Szalai ’ s Contribution

This article revisits the recognition and redistribution debates emerging from Nancy Fraser’s 1995 agenda article underscoring the dangers in the rise of identity politics and displacement of economic justice in postsocialist age. Júlia Szalai has been a crucial actor in reshaping the research on recognition struggles, and I will focus on the important contribution of her research on the Roma. Looking beyond dichotomy in recognition and redistribution, Szalai’s research has highlighted the interplay and overlapping configurations in recognition struggles: their institutional and historical embeddedness and their emphasis on political agency and voice. Her analysis of the multiple and interacting processes of exclusion of the Roma in Central Europe, including the spatial, educational and employment dimensions and the lack of political representation, reflect a near congruence in misrecognition and malredistribution. Her research highlights shifts in the discourse from the cultural wars to the redistributional wars in neo-liberal market economies between those who have lost status and income in the dominant population and the most vulnerable (minority and migrant populations). Finally, Szalai’s research and writings have extended the theoretical and empirical borders on recognition struggles, engaging with the frameworks of intersectionalities and capabilities both of which offer lenses for revealing complex inequalities and the tensions within the paradigms for social justice that have inspired my own research.

This article revisits the recognition and redistribution debates emerging from Nancy Fraser's (1995;1997) agenda articles underscoring the dangers in the rise of identity politics and the displacement of economic justice in the postsocialist age.In the current era of global inequalities and precariousness and social movements targeting the one percent, the assertion of a paradigm shift, the cultural replacing the material, appears overblown.Nevertheless, the dilemmas and tensions within recognition/redistribution still resonate though they have taken on greater complexity in research over the last decade.Looking beyond the binary in Fraser's approach to recognition (1997), researchers underscored the interplay and overlapping configurations in recognition struggles: their institutional and historical embeddedness, and their emphasis on political agency and voice (Hobson, 2003).Júlia Szalai has been a crucial actor in reshaping the research on recognition struggle; I will focus on her important contribution.
I begin with the essays in Recognition Struggles and Social movements (Hobson, 2003), based upon a project that evolved from four years of dialogue among an interdisciplinary group of scholars, of which Júlia Szalai was a key participant, addressing a region and a group, the Roma in Hungary, which was under-researched.Through rich contextual studies, the book challenged assumptions in the recognition/redistribution debates.Then I focus on Júlia Szalai's research on the Roma within this project and reveal how she has nuanced the recognition/redistribution framework in her subsequent projects and writings.Her account of the Roma in Central Eastern Europe, represents a paradigm case in which there is congruence in misrecognition and maldistribution.Finally, I conclude with how Júlia Szalai's research has extended the theoretical borders in the recognition paradigm, through her integration of intersectionalities and capabilities, both of which are frameworks that are highly relevant to the research terrain, and have inspired my own work on capabilities and social justice.

Challenging the Binary
At the outset, the Recognition Struggles project confronted the binary in recognition/redistribution debates (Hobson, 2003: 1-3: Phillips, 2003: 263-267).Was recognition the fundamental, over-arching moral category, potentially encompassing redistribution (Honneth), or were the two categories fundamental and mutually irreducible (Fraser) (Honneth and Fraser, 2003)?Should the emphasis be on the social psychological cognitive processes that are mirrored in the experiences of disrespect and exclusion or the structural institutional settings where these processes are played out in lives of marginalized groups?However, when these concepts were applied to empirical cases, the waters became muddied and distinctions between these two positions blurred; dependent on which groups experienced marginalization and exclusion, within which social and political contexts, and the borders limiting the discursive universe where causes and remedies are interpreted.The essays in Recognition Struggles revealed interplay between maldistribution (the inequitable distribution of economic resources) and the misrecognition (the devaluation of members of a group based on their identities).
A crucial dimension linking these domains is group agency -collective action and mobilization mirrored in the title of the book based on our project research, Recognition Struggles and Social Movements -and their effect on if and how individuals within the group can exercise rights, have access to social welfare and challenge discrimination and disrespect.These aspects of recognition struggles are sacrificed in Fraser's Weberian approach, in which misrecognition is wedded to institutional patterns of status subordination that prevent the individual from participating fully in different spheres of life (Fraser, 2003).She has defended this shading out of political voice as a response to the problem of reification of identities that beset the politics of recognition.1However, to take this position is to throw out the baby with the bath water rather than engaging with the dilemmas in recognition struggles (Philips, 2003;Yuval Davis, 1993;Young, 1990).
The essays in Recognition Struggles address the dilemmas in political voice, making visible the links between recognition, agency and power across several dimensions.Authority and authenticity, enabling subjects to speak for themselves is a core dimension of recognition and empowerment of the misrecognized (Phillips, 2003Young, 1990;2000).This aspect of recognition struggles is featured directly in the case study of Valiente (2003), where a mothers movement in Spain mobilized to destigmatize their drug addict children as well as gain state resources for them.Valiente argues that in speaking for their children, these mothers preempted agency from their children.Hobson (2003) analyzed the framing of gender equality by feminist political actors in Sweden, defining the boundaries of gender equality, marginalized migrant women's voice.Szalai (2003) addressed the question of representation and who speaks for the group within the context of the limits of the constitutional framework for minority rights in Hungary.The weak institutional framework for minority self-government left little space for protecting the rights of those in their community: leaders of Roma communities faced an impossible choice: either they could challenge the institutions of the majority government risking the demise of local minority representation or become complicit (act as 'smoothing agents') for policies that would undermine their constituents' social and citizenship rights (Szalai, 2003: 206-207).
Other authors engaged with misrecognition and the dialogues between groups and their claims for recognition.Lake (2003) confronts struggles in dialogue between feminist groups and aboriginal women in Australia where feminists appropriated the concept of colonization to dramatize how the Australian historical malestream narrative had denigrated women.They were fiercely criticized by aboriginal women, the colonized.Kulick and Klein (2003) reveal the tensions between gay rights activists seeking legitimacy and transvestite prostitutes in Brazil, the former seeking to distance themselves from this 'scandalous group' and the latter situating themselves within the movement for recognition of gay rights.In presenting the competing claims for recognition among the Roma and the women's movement Szalai (2003: 205-210) revealed how groups striving for recognition can work against each other and reproduce the dynamics of power and dependency in welfare assistance.After the INTERSECTIONS.EAST EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIETY AND POLITICS, 4 (1): 9-23.
withdrawal of the all-encompassing state, a decentralized welfare bureaucracy, paved the way for women entering the new profession of social work as administers of welfare services.Roma community leaders challenged the authority of these women and challenged their capacities to decide on the issues involving the Roma.These competing recognition struggles weakened the position of both (Szalai, 2003: 208-209).Williams (2003) and Hobson (2003) brought the trans-national dimension into focus as a facilitator for dialogues across recognition struggles.Williams' chapter (2003) in particular highlights the role of trans-national NGOs.Despite differences in participation parity in the European Women's Lobby (the more established and highly resourced) and the Black, Minority, and Ethnic Women Project (a fledging group), these groups gave voice and visibility to women's issues that were not addressed in the EU Migrants Forum.
All these aspects of recognition struggles are elaborated in Szalai's future research.Although skeptical of recognition as a useful analytical tool in our early discussions, Szalai has become one of its proponents, taking the conversation further than all of us, extending the theoretical and empirical borders.

Recognition Struggles in Historical Socio-political Context
The context-specific nature of recognition struggles is highlighted by all the contributors in an edited volume; however, Szalai's rich historical and contextual analysis of the social exclusion of the Roma provides the clearest example of the interplay of misrecognition and maldistribution, woven into the narrative of the preand post-Soviet Regime in Hungary (Szalai, 2003).She underscores the continuity in racial ethnic discrimination of the Roma as well as its contextual specificity.Tracing the roots of Roma exclusion in the Soviet era, she begins with the non-recognition of ethnic minorities where mandatory assimilation meant a suppression of ethnic and minority languages and cultural identities.Although the Roma were constructed as workers in the socialist economy, Szalai reveals that distinctions persisted between the Roma and majority population in Hungary.They were guaranteed employment, housing and other benefits accorded to workers in the socialist economy; nevertheless they were excluded from 'rewards and opportunities' that the majority had access to in the informal economy.This placed them at a great disadvantage in the transition to the market economy after the fall of the old regime.The Roma lacked access to social and economic resources enjoyed by large segments of the Hungarian population, such as tools and equipment for extra employment social networks for selling and trading goods (Seleny, 2006).Szalai (2003 and2014) makes the important point that the exclusion of the Roma from this potential opportunity for gaining a foothold in the new market economy was not just the result of structural inequalities but also a conscious political strategy to appease the dominant majority, who would also feel the brunt of liberalized market structures.Nearly 40 per cent of jobs were lost after the transition to market economy, while only 10 per cent have been replaced (Szalai, 2013a: 13).The competition for welfare resources evolved in what Szalai refers to as the bifurcated welfare state (Szalai, 2013b) in which the majority of welfare funds were directed towards private businesses in the liberalized market economy.The creation  POLITICS, 4 (1): 9-23. of middle class jobs in the welfare sector offered opportunities for those who lost their jobs as a result of the restructuring.They became the administrators determining which claims were justified and which were not in the new system of meager meanstested welfare provisions.Here the lines were clearly drawn in which the Roma formed the bulk of perceived non-deserving poor and poverty was identified as a Roma problem attributed to their character flaws and their poor attitude toward work (Szalai, 2003;2014a).As was true in the American welfare system, deservedness was constructed in terms of types of entitlements (Boris, 1995;Fraser and Gordon, 1994), pensions and social security and benefits were the legitimate channel for state expenditures; welfare, became a derogatory term for those on the dole, viewed as freeloaders, intertwined with race.
In Hungary, this same two-track system was put in place.In fact, the shift from a universal to a rigorous means-tested system, did not result in a shrinking welfare state expenditures, after the transition to market economy but rather an expansion; the social security index rose to 177 per cent after 2005 (Szalai, 2013b, 13), alongside the drastic reductions in social assistance.Hence, the competition for minuscule resources between the vulnerable from the dominant majority and Roma intensified.

The Many Faces of Segregation and Inequalities
Through her analysis of the many faces of segregation in her subsequent research Szalai offers a multi-dimensional lens for understanding the near congruence in misrecognition and maldistribution in the exclusion of the Roma (Szalai, 2014a;2016).Segregation acts both as a process mirroring stigma and discrimination against the Roma, and as an outcome, producing the structural barriers inhibiting full participation in the community in employment, education and political representation.
Spatial segregation exists across settlements in small regions, some of which have become Roma only localities, where the poorest and most marginalized reside.These communities are marked by the 'dilapidated appearance of the houses, streets and public spaces' (Szalai, 2014a: 137), their lack of infrastructure and services and inferior schools.Non-Roma living in these areas are stigmatized (gypsy-ized) (Szalai, 2014: 137), maintaining the ethnic borders and reinforcing the physical and social distances between the majority and minority.Moreover, residential segregation is compounded by the isolation of these communities from transportation services, resulting from privatization of public services, so that markets as well as lobbying groups determine who will be served.This circumscribes the employment opportunities open to the Roma, the third face of segregation, in which the Roma are forced take the worst jobs in the informal private sector without contracts and social security protections or assigned low-wage dead end workfare jobs (Szalai 2014a: 151;2016).In the public discourse, cultural traits rather than structural forces are explanations for the marginal position of the Roma in the labor market.
Another dimension of segregation that Szalai (2014b) elaborates is in sphere of education, which has received the most attention from international actors.Pressure from the EU (in the accession negotiations) and international NGOs led to a reduction of special schools for Roma in Central European Societies (hereafter CES) INTERSECTIONS.EAST EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIETY AND POLITICS, 4 (1): 9-23.and their prohibition in Hungary.Nevertheless, new ways of retaining ethnic borders persisted and preserved status differences, mainly through tracking the Roma into special classes or programs, which label them as other and lesser (Szalai, 2194a).According to Szalai's research a third of Roma children of compulsory age did not attend school, defined as 18 years in 2011 (Szalai 2014a: 147;1 and Schiff, 2014b: 74).These different aspects of segregation make visible the near congruence in misrecognition and maldistribution in the social exclusion of the Roma.

Political Participation and Voice
Political participation illustrates another example of processes shaping Roma exclusion.Taking her starting point on how minority rights were inscribed in the 1993 Hungarian Constitution, Szalai emphasizes the fact that these rights were aimed at protecting the cultural rights of 13 national minorities.This left little space for Roma to challenge the forms of discrimination and exclusionary processes that were sustained and would be intensified in the shift toward a neoliberal market economy: their disadvantage in employment, education and social entitlements (Szalai, 2008;2014a).As Szalai notes, the Roma increased political representation in the 1990s in Hungary (as was true of all minority groups).De-centralization, which could have enabled them to take a major role in promoting Roma rights and concerns; nevertheless, this was thwarted (2014a).First by a law, which restricted who can claim minority identity, and second, by the Roma's dependence on the municipalities (the local majority) for allocating resources.With little perceptible change in their situation, trust in local representatives declined and interest in the political sphere waned (this also occurred in Romania with different political initiatives and structures for increasing the Roma's political influence; Szalai 2014a).What can be gleaned from this outcome is that political representation is not equivalent to political voice, specifically in recognition struggles when the group is highly stigmatized, has weak capabilities, and is spatially and socially segregated from the dominant majority.
This brings us back to a key dimension in recognition struggles highlighted by Philips (2003) in her epilogue as well as the other essays in Recognition Struggles and Social Movements on the importance of group agency and collective voice, missing in Fraser's frame of status subordination. 2 Szalai's analysis of the tensions within the politics of difference, when it comes to the Roma, reveals that when cultural rights are the main frame for recognition, other claims for social rights, inclusion and membership are shaded out; nonetheless addressing misrecognition of a cultural group necessitates collective voice for political visibility and the representation of its members.These multiple faces of exclusion and segregation work in tandem inhibiting Roma from achieving full citizenship.Despite the recognition of the international community of the need for breaking the cycle of exclusion and segregation in launching the Decade of the Roma, the question remains why there has not more change and what are the possibilities for activating recognition struggles that could INTERSECTIONS.EAST EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIETY AND POLITICS, 4 (1): 9-23.transform institutions and alter daily practices.Júlia Szalai's research provides crucial perspectives on both these questions when confronting the dilemmas and complexities in recognition struggles and how they are played out in the case of the Roma.

Dilemmas and Challenges in Recognition Struggles
Szalai's fine-grained analysis of the Roma social movement makes visible more generally the challenges in recognition struggles mirrored in the tensions and hierarchies within them: (1) how do these movements create and sustain solidarities; and (2) how do they ensure that their voices and influence in policies being heard in the initiatives to improve their condition when global actors are speaking for them and trans-national institutions distributing the resources for development programs.
There are many constraints in creating solidarities within a marginalized group; however one that has be overcome is the fragmentation in identities that hinders collective response to exclusion.Hence, the tendency of the better off Roma in Central European countries to distance themselves from the plight of the poorest and most marginalized Roma, undermines a crucial component in successful recognition struggles, the creation of group solidarity.For instance, the Roma established in settlements can be hostile to new migrants (the poorest of the poor).This distancing occurs even among Roma representing their constituencies in settlements who seek to be accepted by the majority.Furthermore, some local Roma politicians have abandoned the Roma party altogether motivated by their desire to have more influence in policymaking.This lack of solidarity not only weakens the capabilities of Roma to challenge discrimination and exclusion, but also reinforces stereotypes.
Fraser's caution against group politics and collective identities needs to be reassessed when considering social exclusion of the Roma.Speaking in one voice for a group can result in the reification of identities and shade out diversities and differences within a group, still cultural frames affirming self-worth that transcend differences are central to mobilizing devalued and misrecognized groups.Here Honneth's (2003) emphasis on the psychological subject and social dimensions are salient for the recognition struggle of the Roma where stigma and shame are internalized and self-realization of one's own experiences of devaluation are connected to a group membership.At the same time, self-affirming cultural frames are central to mobilizing misrecognized groups. 3In her analysis of ethnic communities, Szalai (2014) highlights the importance of a shared historical narrative, which can create cohesion within a group and legitimate their movement for social rights and citizenship among the broader public.
This aspect of reclaiming and recasting the historical narrative has been central in the early phases of various recognition struggles: in the feminist movement, books with titles such as Herstory (Ashby et al., 1995); and projects, such as Marilyn Lake's rewriting of the Australian history viewed from the double lens of women's exploitation and their contribution to the national narrative (Lake, 1995;Grimshaw et INTERSECTIONS.EAST EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIETY AND POLITICS, 4 (1): 9-23.al., 2000).The emergence of Afro-American history in the US provided an alternative reading of the national narrative and is now an established research topic in most American universities, with its own canon of literature and numerous journals.It has even become part of the curriculum in secondary education, officially recognized during the Black History month. 4he Roma in Europe have not had the same impact on European educational institutions and to do so would necessitate a redrafting 'history from scratch'; a grievous exercise that would require the courage to re-evaluate memories and 'deeply ingrained national values' (Szalai, 2013a: 137) of the majority population, not feasible in the current climate in many Eastern and Central European countries where there has been a rise in nationalist movements.
Within the context of marginalization and exclusionary processes, Szalai concedes that affirming cultural difference can result in exclusion and disadvantage, specifically minority languages within schools that weaken the chances of minority youth to compete with majority youth.However, she also notes that for some groups, segregated ethnic communities can offer youth a 'safe haven' against discrimination and disrespect establishing their own schools and neighborhood centers (Szalai and Schiff, 2014b: 239;Szalai, 2014: 277-278).Nevertheless, these safe havens also limit broader contacts with the majority.This is expressed by ethnic youth in many European countries reflected in their desire to achieve higher education and better positions in the labor market, while at the same time feel the pull of the community for protection against racism (Szalai and Schiff, 2014b: 79), 5 This dilemma over claims for cultural difference and integration is less salient for the Roma in Hungary, where forced assimilation under the Soviet Regime erased their language.Furthermore, the extreme poverty and marginalization in segregated Roma communities cannot provide protections or resilience against discrimination for their youth (Szalai, 2014b;240-241); for those who seek to achieve respect and wellbeing, not voice, but the exit option is the path most often taken, which results in a void in leadership in their communities.

Authority and Voice
Who speaks for the group can reflect hierarchies across gender, class, ethnicity and education can shade out plurality and difference within collectivities (Hobson, 2003: Introduction), as well as weaken the capabilities of the potential of the group for greater participation in public discourse and policy.This is particularly true when the authorities to speak for them are professional experts, outside the group.There are instances when marginalized groups cannot speak for themselves and rely on others, i.e. the undocumented who risk deportation or women in Saudi Arabia who are totally under the guardianship of relatives.However, most often, subordinated groups are not willing to give up their voice and authorize experts to speak for them.Undeniably, transnational actors at the EU level and working in international NGOs have given voice to the plight of Roma and allocated resources for development projects that INTERSECTIONS.EAST EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIETY AND POLITICS, 4 (1): 9-23.
would improve their situation.Still, these experts inadvertently contribute to perpetuating the assumption of the majority populations in Central European societies that the Roma lack the capabilities to govern themselves.For example, according to Szalai, NGOs in charge of EU initiatives for investments in infrastructure and education for the Roma, have not included the Roma in planning or implementation (Szalai, 2014a: 158).Hence, providing them with good jobs not only would increase skills but also lead to the creation of other jobs for Roma; these forms of inclusion would serve to legitimatize the Roma as active agents for making change in their communities.Transnational actors can be a venue giving agency and voice to groups with less resources, as seen in the Black, Ethnic and Women's Migration Project supported by the European's Women's Lobby (discussed by Williams, 2003).However, this example may be more the exception than the rule for the most vulnerable and marginalized groups, such as the Roma, who are highly dependent on NGOs for access to economic and social resources.There is an abundant literature on the ways in which NGOs interpret and translate the experiences of those who are objects of their development programs to fit a narrative of the victimization and weak capabilities of aid recipients that their donors expect to hear (Gal et al., 2015).

Beyond Recognition and Redistribution: Taking the Conversation Further
The challenges and dilemmas in the recognition paradigm have encouraged many of us in the book project to seek other frameworks for explaining complex inequalities that emerge from misrecognition and maldistribution.Two frameworks, intersectionalities and capabilities, integrated and elaborated in Júlia Szalai's work, have inspired the theoretical and empirical directions in my own research.
Current theorizing on intersectionality in the social sciences has moved beyond an additive approach (gender plus class plus race) toward a complex use of intersectionality as an analytical tool for revealing complex inequalities shaped by multiple identities and intersections in gender, race/ethnicity, class, sexualities, and disabilities (Collins and Bilge, 2016).Moreover, there has been an institutional turn in the intersectional approach that focuses on social processes and social systems (McCall, 2005;Choo and Ferree, 2010) shaping inequalities.This approach assumes that the individual is situated along different axes of geographical, economic, social, citizenship, and migrant status, embedded in different institutional contexts.More emphasis is laid upon broader social processes and their effects, such as welfare state restructuring, neoliberal policies, global capitalism, and migration flows, all of which need to be understood in terms of variations in situated agency and differential power resources (Collins and Bilge, 2016).
The transition economies (Central Eastern European countries) provide a laboratory for analyzing how macro processes shape multiple interacting dimensions across a range of social dimensions such as gender, class, ethnicity, age, and their intersections, and how these are constituted within dominant institutions and hierarchies (McCall, 2005;Choo and Ferree, 2010).Anticipating this evolution in theorizing intersectionalities, Szalai's analysis reveals how the shift to market economy and the emergence of neoliberal policies shaped destinies and power relations, INTERSECTIONS.EAST EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIETY AND POLITICS, 4 (1): 9-23.
reflected in the intersections in class and gender, minority statuses and ethnicity.The emergence of private markets, entrepreneurialism and government subsidies benefited high-skilled men more than women.The revamping of the welfare system from universalism to needs-based means-tested, opened up a career path for women without jobs after the regime change who became the administrators of a system that etched out the ethnic divide in welfare provisions solidifying the association between Roma and the undeserving poor (Szalai, 2013a).
In some of Szalai's recent work on recognition, based upon a large-scale Framework 7 European project on ethnic differences and education in several European countries (EDUMIGROM, of which she was project director), the intersectional framework is explicit.She and her collaborators elaborated and contextualized the ethnic ceiling education in several European societies, focusing on the salience of national discourses on structures within ethnic communities (Szalai, 2014b).Here differences in new and old ethnic communities are visible; the latter prevalent in France and the UK, have provided a greater sense of cohesion, as well as resources and networks for employment.Residential segregation by class is an important factor hindering educational opportunities of ethnic youth, most pronounced in the situation of Roma where residence mirrors social exclusion and where class can be disaggregated in degrees of poverty and marginalization.Internal migration is another process shaping intersectionalities and inequalities (discussed above), resulting from the displacement of Roma from desirable areas for development where the majority population now resides.Internal migration has created distinctions between old and new Roma communities.
Alongside the intersectional contextual approach, Szalai has incorporated the concept of capabilities in her research on ethnic youth and school leaving (see: 2014a and 2014b).With its emphasis on situated agency and its dynamic multi-dimensional framework (Hobson, 2017), the capabilities approach offers another lens for analyzing exclusion and marginalization of ethnic minorities.The blending of these two frameworks, intersectionalities and capabilities, is found in both Júlia Szalai's and my work, resulting from the dialogues and research exchange we have had over the years.In our research, the constructions of nationhood, citizenship and social membership are bound up with the differences across social groups and within them (Szalai, 2014a;2014b;Hobson and Lister, 2002; see also Williams, 1995).This was obvious Szalai's analysis of the citizenship rights of minorities from other countries, the more privileged, versus the Roma, a minority who have been settled in the Hungary for centuries (2014a).In my research on migrants in the care/domestic sector, the prospects for inclusion reflect differences in capabilities, between old and new migrants, between European (East versus West) and non-European (Hobson et al., 2018).Class and education also matter in social membership and inclusion of migrant care workers, whether one's training is from a preferred country (Western Europe, North America).In fact, while educational attainment is assumed to enhance capabilities, the skills and educated achievement of migrants in our study were often not recognized.Migrant status was also an important dimension shaping capabilities; whether one was documented or undocumented, particularly in societies with a low tolerance for informal work, most notably in Scandinavian countries (Hobson et al., 2018).As is evident in Szalai's study of the Roma, in our study of trans-national INTERSECTIONS.EAST EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIETY AND POLITICS, 4 (1): 9-23.migrant domestic workers, agency and choice was interconnected with ethnic stereotypes and racial hierarchies; those from African countries often received less pay; some of the clients employing domestic workers stated their preferences for young, light-skinned, blond women (Spanish interviews of employers of domestic workers) and nearly all would choose native born rather than migrants (Hobson et al., 2018).
Underscored in both Szalai's study of ethnic youth and education (2014b) and in our study of domestic workers, agency and capabilities for making alternative choices, the essence of the capabilities approach is dependent upon laws and policies of the state, but also community resources and networks (Hellgren, 2015).Furthermore, in both our cases, a lack of political voice in unions or politics weakened the capabilities and agency for making change.
Within the narratives of the Roma and the domestic workers, the experiences of disrespect and discrimination were pervasive.Having respect is one of Sen's core functionings (achievement for wellbeing and quality of life).Respect in Sen's framework is also intertwined with other capabilities: having employment, completing one's education, having a decent place to live (Sen, 1993) and overcoming malredistribution, which entails major structural change.Here we come full circle back to the interplay in recognition and redistribution.
Szalai's studies of the Roma bring into stark relief the importance of overcoming the recognition and redistribution dichotomy and creating a synthesis between them in order to understand the marginalization of groups and strategies for achieving social justice.As Phillips has argued, these two frames exist in nearly all movements for social inclusion.Even in movements at the end of the continuum, such as LGBT rights, considered to be the pure type of recognition politics (Fraser, 1995), there has been an emphasis on claims for social resources including access to social rights, such as pensions and parental leave, since partnership and marriage has been legally recognized by many countries.At the other end of the spectrum are the Roma where there is near congruence in recognition and redistribution struggles in which cultural stereotypes are harnessed to justify inequalities in employment, schools, and political voice and representation, and in which structural change and redistribution of public goods are crucial for breaking these stereotypes and ending cycle of poverty.
As is obvious from this celebration of Júlia Szalai's contribution to the debates of recognition/redistribution, whereas the cultural wars in identity politics dominated the 1990s, in this century, recognition struggles are interlocked with distributional wars, reflecting the growing divide between rich and poor in many advanced capitalist societies.Júlia Szalai's research resonates, as we witness the competition and tension between disadvantaged minorities and the growing numbers among the majority with insecure futures and precarious employment, which is one factor considered in the rise of populist right.Misrecognition is experienced by both marginal groups, among racial/ethnic minorities and those in the majority population.Elites have played the race/ethnicity/religion card: dividing precarious white workers from blacks and creating an ethnic and religious backlash that reverberates in nationalist movements