Familiarizando a não-familiaridade: alteridade e dimensão afetiva nas representações sociais de ciganos

The study aimed to analyse the social representations of Roma people among non-Roma in the Greater Metropolitan Region of Vitoria/Brazil. With data collection done through questionnaire, 300 people, aged between 10 and 25 years old, participated in the study. The results, analysed through factorial analysis of correspondence and cluster analysis, showed four sets of representations about Roma people – “They are like those others,” “I distrust and they bother me,” “I do not know them, but I am afraid,” and “I am fascinated by that different culture” – and also three different affective positions, oriented by the discomfort, threat and fascination. The complexity of the process of familiarization in the construction of social representations is discussed in its interface with the dynamics of alterity.