Participation and Cooperation in the Construction of Problems and Proposals of Roma Housing

In this paper we are considering the opportunities and limitations of non-governmental cooperation and participation on the basis of the experiences and results of an international project engaged in researching the discriminative mechanisms of housing policy, which was closed in 2014. The succeeding phases of the research are the following: at first the level of document analysis is presented, consisting of collecting and preparing documents on the local, regional and municipal level dated between 2003–2013, related to the housing of Roma, and their analysis with linguistic pragmatic methods. Our aim was to reveal the possible hidden or public mechanisms of the Hungarian housing policy, phrasings in the texts of documents, which despite the principles of equal opportunities and civil rights framed as a guideline put the Roma groups at disadvantage and lead to their segregated housing status or make the practice of daily administration more difficult. We also present that disseminational practice followed by the document analysis, characterised by non-governmental cooperation and involvement of non-governmental knowledge. We wanted to ascertain whether problems identifies by our research constitute real problems for non-governmental workers and what other, related negative discriminational experiences they have. We hoped to reach new, unexpected or jointly created solutions by the confirmation or modification of our starting point. We considered it necessary and worth to invest some energy into such researches and planning processes, which throw new light upon local problems and situations. The social participation and social engagement can assist political changes and social transformations.