Roma Children Stuck in a Triangle: School Dropout, Child Marriage and Child Labor

Roma people, estimated to number between 1.2 million and 2.3 million in Türkiye, live under deep poverty and discrimination. The Turkish Roma Survey, which is the data source of this study shows that Roma women have higher fertility level (2.8 births per woman) than women in Türkiye (1.6 births per woman); 65 percent of Romani households are below the average welfare level; 70 percent of the Roma people have experienced discrimination in different areas. The main objective of this study is to understand the different strategies of Roma population uses to cope with the deep poverty and discrimination. In this process, three theoretical approaches, which do not exclude one another, namely “social characterics framework”, “minority-status assumption” and “sub-cultural assumption” will be used to understand the rationale behind the coping strategies. The preliminary findings show that Roma children are leaving school as a strategy to cope with poverty and discrimination, switching to either child labour or child marriage. While the schooling rate of boys is 65 percent in primary and secondary schools; this rate drops to 8 percent in high school. Thirty-six percent of children who drop out of school start child labour. This rate is 42 percent for boys aged 15-17. Seventy-two percent of girls are attending primary and secondary school while it drops to 15 percent in high school. Among girls who drop out school, 22 percent of them get married by the age of 15; 68 percent get married by the age of 18. The results of our analysis provide evidence for all three theoretical arguments. These coping strategies create a vicious circle in the formation of human capital contributing to the intergenerational transmission of poverty and discrimination and causing children to be stuck in the triangle of school dropout, child marriage, child labour.