In the postsocialist period, Roma women have been recurrently politicised as undeserving mothers, giving birth to too many children and abusing the generous state-financed childcare support system (Durst, 2001; Asztalos Morell, 2017). Less common is to portray Roma women’s agency and resistance towards such allegations. One such example is the protest action by 369 Roma women from two villages who pressed charges against the mayor in one of the neighbouring villages for defamation. The mayor stated at a municipal meeting: In villages where the majority of inhabitants are Roma … women consume by intention such medicine, that leads to the birth of crazy [bolond] children, in order to get entitlement to double family benefits … I have checked, and it is true that a pregnant woman hit her stomach with a rubber hammer in order to give birth to handicapped child. (Origo, 2009) Similar conflicts indicate the sensitivity of local community cohesion and highlight the broken trust between municipal administrations and the local Roma communities. Such cleavages have intensified in the context of the crises of the postsocialist socio-economic transition that have left peripheral rural communities in a state of continuous decline. © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Yulia Gradskova and Ildikó Asztalos Morell; individual chapters, the contributors.