Analyzing Gypsiesʼ lived experience of social exclusion (Case study of Khoramabad cityʼs Gypsies)

Current research has been done by the purpose of analyzing gypsiesʼ lived experience of social exclusion and it was tried to describe and interpret Khoramabad gypsiesʼs life world and semantic system of exclusion and marginal subsistence. On this basis, interpretive paradigm and methodological phenomenology approach are used to gain insight about gypsies intersubjectivities by refrence to their marginal community life history. Semi-structured interview tools and group discussion were taken to collect data from participants. In this study theoretical saturation was obtained after interviewing with 18 people and holding 2 group discussion sessions. To choose participants, theoretical sampling was based and snowball sampling was employed. The main axis of this research results shows gypsiesʼ multi-dimensional deprivation and exclusion that has drawn basic concept of subsistence in gypsiesʼ margin. Producing deprivation cycle of gypsiesʼ life is described and interpreted in some categories, like: “gender stereotypes, To subsist in formal economy margin, livelihood trouble and job insecurity homelessness and falling in deprivation cycle, unsuccessful struggling with social acceptance, feeling strangeness and failure since childhood, anxiety about daily life and degrading group bounds, multiplied deprivation, sheltering in urban defenceless areas”. This group is standed in a continuous exclusion process so that gypsies economical exclusion overlaps social, cultural and institutional exclusion which provides their “falling out” situation of social subsistence with out considering a way to exit this situation. In struggling with subsistence, they continuously reproduce exclusion of society process through vandalism, criminal and deviant behaviors.