In search of legal barriers to Roma’s right to education

Mitigating epistemic injustice through Buber’s distinction between I-Thou and I-It

Abstract

The department of law at University of Gothenburg has for a number of years worked in tandem with local non-profit organizations (focusing on such things as social work, minority rights, asylum rights, and labor law.) Collaboration has, for example, been implemented within law school clinics where students receive valuable experience and non-profit organizations benefit from the legal support provided by law students. In addition, a group of researchers at the department has explored the possibilities of mutually beneficial collaborations with civil society non-profit organizations. This paper explores the possibilities of research within the triad of students, researchers, and non-profit organizations, based on the experience of working with a Roma women’s organization, Trajosko Drom, in Gothenburg, Sweden. The paper argues that Martin Buber’s distinction between “I-Thou” and “I-It” (Buber 1958) may be fruitful when assessing the reciprocal dimension of such a collaboration and may mitigate the risk of what Miranda Fricker describes as “epistemic injustice” (Fricker 2007). The concrete context of this paper concerns barriers to education for Roma minorities in Sweden. These barriers are visible in materials well established within legal scholarship. However, without the benefit of a minority perspective, there is a risk of not noticing them. The paper’s main argument is that a collaboration with a local NGO that creates possibilities for the genuine and ontologically constitutive I-Thou relationships reduces the risk of marginalizing and silencing of voices within legal scholarship. However, in order to create possibilities for I-Thou, there is a need, first, of a mutual beneficial I-It relationship. Research collaborations with local NGO’s set up in this manner reduce the risk of epistemic injustice.