Journal of Research and Innovation for Sustainable Society (JRISS) Volume 5, Issue 1, 2023 ISSN: 2668-0416 Thoth Publishing House 86 Roma people and their road to cultural identity. Andrei Ghimisi 1 1 National University of Political Studies and Public Administration E-mail: ghimisi4567@gmail.com Abstract: The paper “Roma people and their road to cultural identity’’ aims to present how the cultural identity of the Roma people has evolved through time and how it managed to preserve itself through history. Furthermore, it is important to see how the cultural identity of the Roma people is a key component in forming any kind of public policies and also in better understanding the differences between different groups. Keywords: cultural identiy, roma people, cultural values, historical content 1.Introduction The identity of the Roma people is a complicated concept to fully define. Cultural, social and historical content is found in it, and the task of the researcher is to define how these elements are connected to each other at a given time and in a certain group, and how the hierarchy of elements appears and changes over time. We can see that in literature, when it comes to defining the identity (or identities of the Roma – because the plural form seems to be more appropriate here) we can distinguish two main approaches: the essentialism of the traditional approach and the relationism of the so-called constructivist perspective. In the first approach, Roma identity is perceived as a reproduction of a cultural essence or substance: the idiom of 'being Roma' which is a transposition of the fundamental values of Roma culture into the behaviour of Roma individuals and into the life of a group. Culture here is an independent variable: to explain social life we have to refer to the culture that offers certain patterns that are activated in particular situations. 2. The different approaches on the Roma peopl e’s cultural identity In this approach, characterizing ethnography and traditional history, the Roma were considered an ethnic group with a stable, strong and practically unchanged identity. Such an identity can be understood as a synthesis of a common origin and cultural immunity. Thus, a Roma was someone whose ancestors came from India and arrived in Southern Europe in the fourteenth century and who was born a Roma – that is, someone was of Roma ethnicity. In a cultural sense, a Roma was a person who spoke the Romani language and whose daily life was marked by the concept of a world divided into "pure" and "impure" spheres, who expressed solidarity with other Roma who showed respect for the hierarchy within the group, who accepted the obligations arising from the structure of the Roma community, and someone who, through nomadism or the adoption of specific forms of professional activity, he tried to lead to a normal life to minimize the extensive control of the non-Roma environment. This set of values makes up a special code of behaviour, with an associated way of seeing the world that together constitutes the essence of being a Roma, the "true Belonging" defined by some Roma groups such as romanipen, romipen, romanija, ciganija, etc.[1] DOI: 10.33727/JRISS.2023.1.10:86-89