Transformations of Roma’s Marriage Patterns after Migration from Slovakia to the Czech Republic

The article is based on the analysis of the field data from the Slovak and Czech localities inhabited by the Roma. It presents a model of the transformation of a part of the studied group in the Czech localities after their emigration since the end of the WWII from Slovakia. The authors present a model of the patterns which prevailed in the choice of the marital partner in the oldest generation, living in the Slovak Roma settlements. This pattern was characterized by stress on the fact that the marital partner should be either a cognate or an affine or related by both of these ways. The first generation of the people who left Slovakia and settled in the Czech urban localities adhered to this pattern. The second generation, born or brought up in the Czech Republic, either stick to the old pattern (within the original kin group) or tried to devise new solutions (a marriage with a non-Roma or a marriage with a member of a strange Roma group from the same locality). These solutions, and marriages following from them, were, however, mostly unsuccessful. In the third generation, the same patterns are applied as in the first generation, but not with the members of the original kin group, but with the other (for thirty previous years considered as strange) Roma groups from the same locality. Many marital alliances are established between these groups, till this time strange and mutually endogamous