“I can help children who grew up in similar circumstances to me” Roma university students’ perceptions of being bicultural mentors

This paper discusses the perceptions of university students who are mentors in aHungarian mentoring programme, helping primary school pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, mostly Roma pupils. The paper relies on findings of research on biculturalism in education sciences and on critical mentoring. This study is based on two empirical data collections: an online questionnaire (2022/2023) and an interview study (2024/2025), involving Roma mentors. This study applies the definition of bicultural mentors to university students who are from a similar background and culture to their protégés, as opposed to mentors from the majority society (non-Roma students). As universities do not collect data on minority background, we can only estimate that bicultural mentors are over-represented both in the sample and the programme. This may be linked to personal involvement in their community and/or some societal expectations of Roma to serve as role models when returning to their communities. The interviews illustrated the importance of biculturalism and supported and explained the results of the questionnaire. Additionally, applying the perspective of critical mentoring, this paper illustrates the importance of community embeddedness. The findings of this research highlight the benefits of considering mentors’ bicultural identities in training and supervision during the mentoring process.