ROMA/GYPSIES IN EUROPE - EXODUS OR INVASION? The “Culture of Poverty” and the East-West Roma migration

ROMA/GYPSIES IN EUROPE - EXODUS OR INVASION?

The “Culture of Poverty”

and

the East-West Roma migration

DRAFT RESEARCH PAPER

JUNE 2006

To my son,

Perhan Manush Rromano, so that he will feel normal,

a thing that was not meant to be neither for myself nor for my co-ethnics

Motto:

The human being finally understood that he is alone in this pitiless immense

universe from which he came into being by hazard. Neither his destiny nor his

obligations were recorded in writing. The choice is just his: either the Heaven

Empire or this dark tenebrous world (…)He now knows that, similar to a Gypsy,

he finds himself on the edge of the Universe, where he is forced to live. An

universe deaf to his music, indifferent of his hopes, as well as to his sufferings.

Jacques Monod , Le hasard et la nécessité. Essai sur la philosophie naturelle de la biologie

moderne. Paris, Le Seuil, 1970.

Contents

I. Executive summary

II. Conceptual clarifications

III. Research methods and objectives

IV. A historical background of legislation and European public

policies addressed to Roma/Gypsies

IV.1. Roma people – the second class citizens

IV.2. The “culture of poverty”

IV.3. Roma and social health

V. Migration and exclusion. A breviary

V.1. The first migration wave - between the Crusades and the Fall of Byzantine

Empire

V.2. The second migration wave – after the Roma’s slavery abolishment in

Hapsburg Empire and the Old Romanian States (1856)

V.3. The third migration wave - from the collapse of Communism until today

VI. Roma/ Gypsies and the political culture – an emergent perspective

VII. An update of the public policies for improving the situation of

Roma in Europe

VIII. Facts and findings

IX. Conclusions and recommendations

3

II. Conceptual clarifications

Motto:

The first rule was that I would not accept anything as true which I did not clearly

know to be true. That is to say, I would carefully avoid being over hasty or

prejudiced, and I would understand nothing by my judgments beyond what

presented itself so clearly and distinctly to my mind that I had no occasion to

doubt it.

(Descartes, Discourse on Method / Discours de la methode pour bien conduire sa raison, et

chercher la verité dans les sciences)

While writing the fellowship application I only had an intuition of the need for an

anthropological study as an attempt to cover a significant gap in the articulation of the

public policies envisaged by the Decade of Roma Inclusion.

One surprising finding related to the true dimensions of this research was the almost

complete lack of academic work in this field; it seemed that the study of the "primitive

culture" of the Roma did not attract interest in Anthropology, either before or after

Malinowski and Levi Strauss. Research has been limited to minor studies on language

and history, although there are numerous explicit archive sources referring to the Roma,

beginning already from the Middle Ages: not just sources referring to the presence of

Roma in European arts, but hundreds of excommunications and edicts, expulsions of

Roma from European states, organised ”hunts” against Roma, medieval slavery,

deportation in colonies at the end of 19th century, the second World War “Forgotten

Holocaust” - but also the one from Kosovo; these are not researched enough or known

– so that they would be integrated into the public discourse, as explanation of the

historical social exclusion of Roma and the socio-cultural gap between Roma and the

majority population.

Trying to choose my approach, I focused on Roma self-identification and hetero -

identification and I attempted to achieve better knowledge of the historical interaction

between the Roma and the contact population.

4

In this sense, the comprehensive World Bank study “Roma in an Expanding Europe -

Breaking the Poverty Cycle”1, the initiator and the catalyst of a series of public policies

dedicated to Roma in Europe, although focusing only on measurable and quantitative

aspects, made me see the need of a juxtaposition2 that will redefine the impact of social

action on culture3.

Marx and Engels argued that the social, political, moral, and aesthetic ideologies of

society are widely shared and that these ideologies are largely manufactured to serve

the political and economic interests of the dominant class. Because of their control of

the means of intellectual production (e.g., mass media, universities), the “ruling classes”

are able to convince non-elites of the moral and intellectual righteousness of social

policies, especially allocative policies that primarily serve the interests of the owners of

the means of production rather than the interests of the workers and lower classes

(similar arguments by Gramsci, Mosca etc.)

Eminently anti-cultural, this new cultural Marxism approach that was embraced by all

institutions that implement the Decade of Roma Inclusion may seem justified to a

certain extend. The absence of information and research on mentalities referring to

Roma entail a functionalist perspective, focused on the values’ viability in the social

construction of reality4.

Sociologist Max Weber established possible connections among power, prestige, and

unequal access to resources. He suggested that social inequality tends to develop in a

society when people have unequal access to whatever is considered valuable: natural

resources, labour, money, or (especially in non-Western societies), intangibles such as

1 Dena Reyngold, Mitchell A.Orenstein, Erika Wilkens, “Roma in an Expanding Europe - Breaking the Poverty Cycle”, 2005,

www.worldbank.org. The foreshadowing on this extensive study was in 2000 under the World Bank auspices, Dena Ringold,

“Roma and the Transition in Central and Eastern Europe: Trends and Challenges”.

2 Vijayendra Rao and Michael Walton, “Culture and Public Action”, Stanford University Press, 2004, v. Culture and Public

Action www.worldbank.org

3 The observation that cultural norms affect economic development has been made repeatedly, yet it has been very hard to use it

effectively, whether for policy or for prediction”, Kenneth Arrow, Emeritus Professor of Economics, Stanford University, in

“Culture and Public Action”.

4 Despite this constructivist wording, my research will not focus on the historical polemics between constructivism and

structuralism, on the contrary, it embraces the “constructivist structuralism“ or “ structuralist constructivism” of Pierre Bourdieu,

Choses dites, Paris, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1987

5

ritual knowledge; people are entitled to different degrees of prestige, depending on

criteria such as descent, wealth or race, or (more recently), education or

Westernisation; some people enjoy more power, either physical or ideological (based on

ideas and charisma) than others; Such differences are both causes and characteristics

of stratified societies; Society ensures the appropriate behaviour of its members by

rules about social stratification, especially through status, role and prestige.

Weberian or poststructuralist accents are not missing from the Decade’s approach,

these being sub-summed under an interpretation where the “conflict between classes”5

is masking a historical “conflict of castes6/races”. Castes are not simply ranked social

categories though in Hindu ideology they are related to the idea of a fourfold division of

society into "varna"- a priestly class; rulers and warriors; landholders and merchants;

cultivators and menial. Local castes or "jatis" are usually endogamous corporate

groups. Hindu cosmology and rules of purity and pollution prohibit eating and sexual

contact between higher and lower castes. These castes are hierarchically ordered in a

fixed rank order, associated with traditional occupations. A person’s caste is fixed by

birth (i.e. ascribed status) and cannot be changed. Then come the Untouchables - so

inferior, they’re considered outside this ranking system altogether.

The aggressive7 toleration of Roma in Europe - manifested either through social

exclusion or under the hypothetical scope of their civilization8, is the same perpetual

social eugenic politics, beyond any temporal or intensity nuances.

5 Marx’s definition of class as an economic phenomenon assumes that in creating their own wealth, the high-ranking classes will

exploit the labour of the low-ranking classes. Marx also suggested that the conflict between different classes, which has been

going on throughout human history, is inevitable. Classes are like strata of a social structure.

6 Braham, M. „The Untouchables: A Survey of the Roma People in Central and Eastern Europe,“ A report to the office UNHCR.

Geneva: UNHCR, 1993; The Roma - "Europe's untouchables" - A survey by UNDP under the auspices of the Council of Europe,

OSCE and ODIHR (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) http://meero.worldvision.org.

7 “However, this tolerance cannot be indiscriminate and equal with respect to the contents of expression, neither in word nor in

deed, it cannot protect false words and wrong deeds which demonstrate that they contradict and counteract the possibilities of

liberation. Such indiscriminate tolerance is justified in harmless debates, in conversation, in academic discussion; it is

indispensable in the scientific enterprise, in private religion. But society cannot be indiscriminate where the pacification of

existence, where freedom and happiness themselves are at stake: here, certain things cannot be said, cannot be proposed,

certain behaviour cannot be permitted without making tolerance an instrument for the continuation of servitude.” - Herbert

Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance”, in Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore, jr., and Herbert Marcuse, A Critique of Pure Tolerance

(Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), pp. 95-137. www.marcuse.org

6

Biopolitics policies for the social/ ethnical health of nations, ethnocentrism and social

domination and exclusion of undesirables/„dysgenics” - has maintained, institutions9 of

contact population, preserved a perpetual status of “Homo Sacer” for the Roma, having

as consequences the Anti-gypsism.

Homo Sacer is the person excluded from all civil rights, an obscure figure of Roman

law, who is excluded, may be killed by anybody, but may not be sacrificed in a religious

ritual. Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben used this concept in “Homo Sacer:

Sovereign Power and Bare Life”(1998) and “State of Exception” (2005). Agamben

describes the Homo Sacer as an individual who exists in the law as an exile (form of

punishment). There is, he argues, a paradox: It is only because of the law that society

can recognize the individual as Homo Sacer, and so the law that mandates the

exclusion is also what gives the individual an identity. Agamben holds that life exists in

two capacities. One is the natural biological life (Greek: Zoë) and the other is the

political life (Greek: bios). This zoe relates to Agamben’s views and to Hannah Arendt's

description of the refugee's "naked life" in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). The

effect of Homo Sacer is, he says, a schism of one's biological and political lives. As

"bare life", the Homo Sacer finds himself submitted to the sovereign's state of exception,

and, though he has biological life, it has no political significance. Agamben further

believes that the states of Homo Sacer, political refugees, those persecuted in the

Holocaust, and the "enemy combatants" imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay and other sites

are similar. As support for this, he mentions that the Jews (and the Roma) were stripped

of their citizenship before they were placed in concentration camps. Thus, Agamben

argues, "the so-called sacred and inalienable rights of man prove to be completely

unprotected at the very moment it is no longer possible to characterize them as rights of

the citizens of a state", following in this Hannah Arendt's reasoning concerning the 1789

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which tied human rights to civil

8 Norbert Elias considers that Europe’s ”process of civilisation” is an inter-dependent mediation between different hegemonic

groups and its subordinated groups, through creation and macro - social expansion of civilisation’s institutions. These networks

of standardization structures had juridical status and focused just on “groups of equals” not including ethnic, religious or linguistic

minorities – Vasile Ionescu, op. cit.

9 The use of the term “institutions” is taking into account not just the states’ institutions, but other institutionalised structures such

as: church, village, town, in some situations Roma non- governmental institutions, formal leaders – such as Bulibasha in Roma

traditional communities etc.

7

rights. Although human rights were conceived of as the ground for civil rights, the

privation of those civil rights (as, for example, in the case of stateless people or

refugees) made them comparable to "savages", many of whom were exterminated, as

Arendt showed, during the New Imperialism period. Arendt's view is that respect of

human rights depends on the guarantee of civil rights, and not the other way

around, as argued by the liberal natural rights philosophers (see also

www.wikipedia.org).

In the sense established by Giorgio Agamben in his trilogy “Homo Sacer” the exclusion

of Jewish people from civil rights through legislation and specific anti-Semitic policies

differ in the sense that in the case of Anti-Gypsism’s (Anti-tiganism) Medieval legislation

(un-abrogated) was applied, being internalised in racist customary laws etc.

Even nowadays, in hundreds of arson attacks on Roma houses, the Mayor, the

policeman, the priest or school director are leading the crowds for “collective justice”,

having insured their impunity (see the recent case of the French Mayor, sentenced, but

with penalty’s suspension, under the pressure of international organizations; see also

postponing for any acceptable solution in the case of crimes and arsons from the

“Hadareni case” (Romania), at CEDO. Although insufficiently documented, the

international organisations mention frequent cases of individual violence against Roma,

avoiding to say that there were lynching cases or, in the case of arsons – collective

violence, as pogroms. Recently, a Romanian High Magistrate, Chief of the military

court, Viorel Sieserman, officially recognised that during the violent events of 13-15

June 1990, there were many cases of many racial illegalities, and that all the events

were actually coordinated by the Police and the Secret Services (see Romanian press

from 13th of June 2006);

This research has proposed to re-define an almost quasi - unknown and unresearched10

human space, through the perspective of a “discourse on method”.

10 Founded in 1888 in London, the Gypsy Lore Society opened the reflection on the situation of Roma, focusing on culture issues

and evaluating using an academic approach, unfortunately inaccessible to public. Starting from 1955, the magazine “Etudes

Tsiganes” edited by UNISSAT (governmental structure coordinating public policies for Roma and nomads in France) and the

8

For a better understanding of the proposed premises for this research, I will briefly

describe the cultural capital theory.

In The Forms of Capital (1986), Bourdieu distinguishes between three types of capital:

1.Economic capital: command over economic resources (cash, assets); 2.Social

capital: resources based on group membership, relationships, networks of influence

and support as "the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to

possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual

acquaintance and recognition"; 3. Cultural capital: forms of knowledge; skill; education;

any advantages a person has which give them a higher status in society, including high

expectations. Parents provide children with cultural capital, the attitudes and knowledge

that makes the educational system a comfortable familiar place in which they can

succeed easily. The article went on to say that cultural capital has three distinct forms:

an embodied state (cultural habitus). A person's character and way of thinking formed

by socialisation; an objectified state. Things which are owned, such as scientific

instruments or works of art. To gain such cultural assets one needs to have cultural

habitus; an institutionalised state: educational qualifications. Their value can be

measured only in relationship to the labour market.In Cultural Reproduction and Social

Reproduction, Bourdieu and Passeron introduced the idea of cultural reproduction,

whereby existing disadvantages and inequalities are passed down from one generation

to the next. This, according to Bourdieu, is partly due to the education system and other

social institutions. Capitalist societies depend on a stratified social system, where the

working class has an education suited for manual labour: levelling out such inequalities

would break down the system. Thus, schools in capitalist societies will always be

stratified too (see www.wikipedia.org).

Centre Recherches Tziganes, Sorbonne University – led by Jean Pierre Liegeois, they elaborated, supported by the Council of

Europe, general documents on Roma in Europe, materials of a great relevance. It is worth mentioning the magazine “Lacio

Drom” (Italy) and Minority Rights Group’s periodical reports. After 1990s, all these either reduced or stopped their activities,

Various states started to elaborate a variety of strategies and policies, with reduced participation of Roma, especially in excommunist

countries, fact that led to a clear need for adopting the international institution’s norms.

9

In “Biopolitics and social medicine”, Foucault uses the concept of State racism to

designate and reapply the historical and political discourse of "race struggle", invented

in Great Britain during the Glorious Revolution and in France at the end of Louis XIV's

reign, by the state, through the mediation, at the end of the 19th century, of racebiologists

and eugenicists. This will flourish through Nazism. Foucault explains how it

was transformed during the 19th century following two lines of directions: the

eugenicist line, which would lead to "state racism", Hitler started as soon as he took

power his programme of selection of population —a real biopolitics— (with the July

1933 "Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring" and the T-4

Euthanasia Program) which would terminate in the Holocaust; and the Marxist line,

which transformed the essentialist notion of "race" into the historical concept of class

struggle. The eugenic line tied itself with the nation-state, transforming the discourse of

"race struggle", which was an emancipatory tool used against the concept of

sovereignty and the person of the king during the Glorious Revolution, into an

instrument of extermination at the hands of the state. On the other hand, the Marxist

discourse of class struggle renewed with the popular "history from below" style of the

medieval discourse of "race struggle", which opposed itself to sovereignty. Along with

Freud's psychoanalysis, it criticizes the biological and essentialist notion of "race" used

by state racism.

As I demonstrated above, in the case of Roma, the continuous loss of the “cultural

capital” by the excluded group is promoted by this bio-powers/ bio-politics and

represents endogenous and exogenous factors, relevant in measuring and combating

the continuous degradation of the Roma situation.

These include: a) a strong feeling of marginalization and helplessness; b) a strong

feeling of dependence and inferiority and a lack of social personality; c) resignation and

fatalism; d) a cycle of poverty, continuously re-enhanced as children assume their

parents' values and attitudes, inheriting and reproducing the state of poverty, the

patterns involved in the culture of poverty.

10

In this view, I considered Roma social exclusion11 as a “lack of recognition of basic

rights, or where that recognition existed, lack of access to a political and legal system

necessary to make those rights a reality”12.

The “critique” of the “culture of poverty”13 undertaken in this work stresses that an

irreversible damage to human existence is caused not as much by material deprivation

as by psychological/cultural deprivation and that racism is the cause of the permanent

exclusion of the Roma, as a continuing phenomenon. In addition, racial exclusion is the

cause of the disastrous situation of Roma in Europe and yet the formula “Roma – the

Black people of Europe” is pernicious, excluding Roma from the juridical rights reserved

for national minorities.

Following this perspective, the polemic on attributing the “culpability” either to states’

institutions or to Roma themselves is proved by the finding that the determinant was the

constrain of the hegemonic groups and not the deliberate choice of Roma; this fact is

observed both in the case of the pauperisation and in the case of the lack of recognition

as an ethnically distinct entity, a fact that permits a continuous latent racism14. Hence,

social health is determined not only by the access or lack of access to resources

(economical, symbolical, prestige, arts and artefacts) but also by the permanent

asymmetrical confrontation between the conquerors and the defeated15 and the

11 In using this concept, I preferred a personal selection (“Foucault method”) to serve to this paper, without focusing on the

paradigmatic polemics between sociologists, economists and policy analysts: (1) placing individuals’ behaviour and moral values

at centre stage (2) highlighting the role of institutions and systems and (3) emphasising issues of discrimination and lack of

enforced rights.

12 Sayce, L.,” From psychiatric patient to citizen: Overcoming discrimination and social exclusion”, Macmillan, 2000

13 Oscar Lewis, “La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty”, San Juan and New York (1966)

14 The historico-political discourse analyzed by Foucault in Society Must Be Defended considered truth as the fragile product of a

historical struggle, first conceptualized under the name of "race struggle" — however, "race"'s meaning was different from today's

biological notion, being closer to the sense of "nation" (distinct from nation-states; its signification is here closer to "people. At the

end of the 19th century, this discourse was incorporated by racists biologists and eugenicists, who gave it the modern sense of

"race" and, even more, transformed this popular discourse into a "state racism" (nazism). According to Foucault, Marxists also

seized this discourse, transforming the essentialist notion of "race" into the historical notion of "class struggle".

15 According to a legacy of the "politico-historical discourse" of "race struggle", analyzed by Michel Foucault in "Society must be

Defended" , it is often argued that the victors of a social struggle use their political dominance to suppress their defeated

adversaries' version of historical events in favor of their own propaganda, which may go so far as historical revisionism. A classic

example of history being written by the victors would be the scarcity of unbiased information that has come down to us about the

Carthaginians. Roman historians left tales of cruelty and human sacrifice practiced by their longtime enemies, but as the

Carthaginians were utterly exterminated by the Romans, we only have one side of the story. Similarly, we only have the Christian

side of how Christianity came to be the dominant religion of Europe, but not the pagan version of these events. We have the

11

consequences that derive from these.

In the same way, the continuous migration has been approached here not just as a

basic mechanism for poverty reduction, but also as a permanent attempt and failure to

change their social status. “Mass culture” has had an undeniable heuristic value, as a

result of the "cultural" policies of exclusion practiced by the institutions of the majority16

cultures. Also, according to the social dominance theory17, it has had the same

undeniable heuristic value, which requires a much more important role in social

sciences.

This perspective eliminates the classic debate concerning the Roma – i.e., whether they

are trapped in tradition or reluctant to modernity – which comes down to a mere

interpretation of life, and focuses instead on the ethics of dialogue with the Otherness of

the Other. I believe the following to be essential for an understanding of the dynamics of

the gradual alteration process undergone by Otherness to the stage of “culture of

poverty”: 1.) regarding tolerance18 and inclusion: studying the outcome of historical

strategies of Roma manipulation and defence which relied either on cultural difference

as “radical Alterity”19, or on resemblance and conversion to the hegemonic model; 2.)

regarding exclusion: enculturation and social purging/cleansing strategies started by the

Church (through canon law) or by European countries (through the adoption of laws

against the Roma).

As far as the Roma are concerned, the analysis focused on collective behaviour, both

from an eschatological perspective (mainstreaming as the future, abolishing history,

custom etc.), and from a conservative perspective (the persistence of the past,

“resistance” through culture etc.).

European version of the conquest of the Americas, but not the native version. We have Herodotus's Greek history of the Persian

Wars, but no Persian counterpart. –see www.wikipedia.org

16 Mass-media – as a forth state power, has a very negative and determinant role in the manipulation of ideologies, promoting on

national and global scale mentalities referring to Roma. In what regards education more and more voices consider in terms of

failure the “special schools” and “itinerant schools”, that led to Roma children segregation. Although the role of religion as

socializing factor seemed still, the phenomenon of mass Roma converting to other protestant cults, especially Pentecostal (that

offer not only a “brother like” equality but also material help) seems to be against the Christianity – see the questionnaire results

17 Sidaniu e & other „Social Dominance Theory: Its Agenda and Method”, Political Psychology, Vol. 25, No. 6, 2004

18 Michael Waltzer, “On Toleration”, Yale University, 1997

19 Jean Baudrillard & Marc Guillaume, “Figures de l’alterité”, ed Paralela 45, Romania, 2004

12

In order to maintain an objective position I deliberately avoided the discourse of

“exoticism” promoted by Roma and non-Roma alike, and instead chose Ortega y

Gasset and Martin Buber’s notions of “radical reality” and “life of dialogue”, respectively.

The in-depth reading of Foucault20, Agamben21, Sloterdijk,22 and Fukuyama23, as well

as of other authors24 whose construction of history is germane to this approach25, was

crucial to the design and adaptation of my own interpretative method.

To outline a history of old and recent ways of social stratification, control and

punishment I referred to Gerhard E. Lenski’s26 main work. As to the perspective of the

Roma themselves, a great part of the expressed opinions are the fruit of personal

reflection and of direct interaction with my mentors Vasile Ionescu, Nicolae Gheorghe

and Rajko Duric.

As this paper was becoming real, it became obvious to me that it cannot do more than

opening an area for assiduous reflection that would re-establish the urgency of

comprehensive research in which a contribution of the young Roma intelligentsia should

become substantial.

III. Research methods and objectives

20 Michel Foucault, “Biopolitics and social medicine”/ “Biopolitica si medicina sociala”, Ideea Design & Print, Romania, 2003

“Lumea e un mare azil”, Ideea Design & Print, Romania, 2005; “Surveller et punir”/ ”A supraveghea si a pedepsi”, Humanitas,

Romania, 1997, “Histoire de la folie a l’age classique”/” Istoria nebuniei in epoca clasica”, Humanitas, Romania, 1996, Les

anormeaux, Seuil, 1999, “Dits et ecrits”, Gallimard, 1994

21 Giorgio Agamben, “Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life”, Stanford University Press, California, 1998, “State of

Exception”, University of Chicago Press, 2005, “The Open. Man and Animal”, Stanford University Press, California, 2004,

“Remnants of Auschwitz.The Witness and the Archive”, Zone Books, New York, 2002

22 Peter Sloterdijk, “Rules for the People Park” / “Reguli pentru parcul uman“, Humanitas, 2003, “In the Same Boat” / “In aceeasi

barca“, Ideea Design & Print, Romania, 2002, “Cultural Despise” / “Dispretuirea maselor“, Ideea Design & Print, Romania, 2002

23 Francis Fukuyama, “Viitorul nostrum postuman.Consecintele revolutiei biotehnologice”, Humanitas, Romania, 2004; “Marea

ruptura”, “Natura umana si refacerea ordinii sociale”, Humanitas, 2002;“Moartea istoriei si ultimul om”, Paideia, Romania, 1997;

“Trust/incredere”, Antet, Romania, 1999

24 ”Omul medieval”, ”Omul Renasterii”, ”Omul baroc”, ”Omul bizantin”, ”Omul grec” etc., Polirom, Romania, 1998 –2003

25 Edward Said, Gilles Deleuse, Maurice Blanchot etc., that made references to Norbert Elias, Erving Goffman, Gilbert Durand,

Rene Girard, Gaston Bachelard Tvetan Todorov, Georges Bataille , Noam Chomsky, Richard Rorty, Amitai Etzioni, Nira Yuval-

Davis etc.

26 Gerhard E. Lenski, ”Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification”, Amarcord, Romania, 2002

13

The preliminary objectives of this research were to conduct an in-depth study of

European, international and national responses to the Roma migration from South-

Eastern Europe and its impact on the actual socio-economic situation of Roma; to

analyze whether and to what extent improvements of the situation of Roma in their

country of origin are related to the East-West migration of Roma communities; to define

and attempt to clarify whether “the culture of poverty” is an incentive for Roma

migration, focusing on Roma access to public health.

Given the welfare-based and institutionalised nature of the Decade, it is important to

see the possible impact of regulating the differences between the historical “stateless

life”27 of Roma communities (living in ghettos, no private property, no representative

structures) and the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005 – 2015. I am interested in the

addressability and legitimacy of the public policies put forward by the Decade, as well

as by the expectations of the Roma themselves regarding these policies.

Within the limitations of these readings and reflections, I believe it is necessary to adopt

a unitary approach to the three lines of my research proposal:

1. Roma and public / social health;

2. Roma migration seen as “nomadic exodus”/“invasion”

3. Roma and the “culture of poverty”

I have argued that these are inter-dependent and serve as the cause and the effect of

one another. From this perspective, public health is defined by access (or lack thereof)

to resources (livelihood as well as symbolic resources, prestige, recognition, education,

arts etc.) as well as the consequences deriving from it, the phenomenon of continuous

migration, in seeking some surviving resources and the “culture of poverty”; they have

also effects of the condition of Homo Sacer28.

27 Pierre Clastres, “La société contre l'État: Recherches d'anthropologie politique”, Éditions de Minuit, 1974 and Jean Wlilliam

Lapierre, “Vivre sans Etat? Essai sur le povoir politique et l’innovation sociale”, Editions du Seuil, 1977

28 Giorgio Agamben op. cit., see footnote no. 14

14

I began with collecting the preliminary materials and data, the literature reviews and

development of the research instruments and then continuing with scheduling field trips

for data collection. All this phase took more time than expected. Between June/ July and

December 2005 I conducted semi-structured interviews in Roma communities in their

origin countries (Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Romania and Serbia &

Montenegro). I tried to look at the Roma situation in their origin countries and to the

push factors that lead to migration, but also to understand how they chose the countries

of migration.

I had very useful discussions with academics and decision-makers regarding the Roma

issue, such as the EC delegation, WB, DFID, UNDP and OSI representatives. I made

the last changes of the questionnaires and semi-structured interviews in Roma camps

and settlements with Roma migrants in Belgium, Spain, United Kingdom until December

2005 and then Italy and France in the first part of 2006.

With 366 questionnaires applied29 in five countries where the Roma migrated and semistructured

interviews in six countries of origin, I managed to have a clearer picture not

just of the Roma migration phenomenon, but of its links with the culture of poverty

theory and social health.

IV. A historical background of legislation and European public

policies addressed to Roma/Gypsies

29 All the quoted interviews are my translations from Romani language, Romanian, French and English.

15

The presence of groups of biologically undesirable strangers is a real danger (…)

The Foundation aims to identify the ways of assimilating immigrants in such a

way as to place them in conditions that are appropriate to their ethnic

specificity.30

Alexis Carell, Rockefeller Foundation Notebooks, 1943

IV.1. Roma people – The second class citizens

Social dominance theory31 considers that the opresion practiced on some groups is

realized through sistemic dicrimination both by institutions and individuals. Many social

institutions (schools, religous organisations, marital practicies, investment and savings

companies) and many individual powers disproportionately alocate the necesary goods

(prestige, wellfare, power, food, healthcare etc.) to dominant and privileged groups,

avoinding the unwanted ones (work in dangeros conditions, prison, premature death

etc.) and directing them towards group members with less power. Because institutions

alocate resources in a systematic way on a larger scale than induviduals, social

dominance theory considers institutional discrimination as one of the major forces in

mentaining and re-creationing a hierarchical social stratification of groups. Hence

individuals support resource allocation – institutions corresponding to their own

ideologies, particulatly when these ideologies are the consequence of a societal

consense that legitimises the ideologies imposed by dominant groups for theirown

interest and in the detriment of the dominated group (behavoiral asimetry). The

acceptance of these ideologies and behaviours legitimizes inequalities thus creating a

co-dependence between the institution and the individual, afirmed or sanctioned

through vote.

Another process leading to compatibility between individuals’ discriminatory

predispositions and their roles within social institutions is institutional socialization.

30 «La présence de groupes d’étrangers indésirables du point de vue biologique est un danger certain (…). La fondation se

propose de préciser les modalités d’assimilation des immigrants afin qu’il devienne possible de les placer dans des conditions

appropriées à leur génie ethnique», Alexis Carell, Cahiers de la fondation Rockefeller, 1943

31 Sidanius, J., Pratto, F., Martin, M., & Stallworth, L. (1991), „Consensual racism and career track: Some implications of social

dominance theory. Political Psychology”, 12, 691–721.

16

Formal institutional rules, peer pressure, institutional incentives, dissonance reduction

processes, and other subtle and direct pressures may all determine people to adopt the

values, beliefs, and attitudes compatible with the social roles they occupy, in the cases

of both dominant and dominated groups. In this last case, the state refuses to ensure

minority rights’ protection and the access of their own culture and history. This is an

institutional racism that has as an effect the “pauperisation” of the Roma etnical ethos,

in the scope of subordonating it to the dominant culture (without an In-group

acceptance).

The vague juridical status of Roma in European states is an explanation of why they are

not included in states public policies, of their “second class citizenship” status which is

very much similar to the one of an immigrant, continuously undesirable32.

The term “vague”, in the sense of an territorial ubiquity, but also in the sense of

“invisibility” as a result of the absence of any minimal on the name or number used in

“approximate” censuring of Roma, in the framework of forced sedentarization policies of

Roma from Hapsburg Empire, the XVIIIth century, under Maria Teresa and Josef the IInd.

With minimal terminological adaptation the states perpetuate this ubiquity which

results in a huge discrepancy between the number of Roma – according to official

censuses and estimative number of Roma – from Police statistics, sociological studies

or from Roma themselves. In some cases, as in the case of Romania, the numbers are

estimated four times higher than the official number of Roma. Even the European

estimations of 8-10 millions Roma preserve this “vague” sense, even if the difference of

2 millions Roma exceeds the population of some European Union’s states.

32 Relevant in this sense is the following quotation form the opera of a great humanist Nicolaus Olahus, “Hungary” (1536): “There

is a village (…) inhabited only by lame, blinds and nasty cripples that don’t give access to healthy people in their community;

priding with their ugliness, they form an special sect and parents; to make sure the normality stays cripple they take out their

children’s eyes when they are new born, they break their bones and legs. And, as if this is was enough and to make more

difference, they invented their own language and they only understand each other – their language is called blind language. This

amazing people are entitled to privileges that release them of any normal obligations that Hungarians have – they sing and play

travelling all over the country for food. This disgraceful and ugly race is a shame and dignified for any torture, because they are

humiliating the entire human race with their bad actions. Our kings and others did not persecute them, being busy with more

important things or unnoticed them in such a big country; although they are good for burning, these members of humanity, known

for this horrors and mutilations"- Vasile Ionescu. op. cit.

17

An overview of the European art and imagery, from Caravaggio’s “Fortune Teller” to

Boccaccino’s “La Zingarella”, Hugo’s Esmeralda, Bizet’s Carmen and Brahms’, Liszt’s

or Lorca’s “Gypsy Songs” will always reiterate the ubiquitous and quixotic portrait of

“wayfaring people” trapped in a century-old stereotype of the underground: forever

begging for alms, singing, telling fortunes, stealing, performing at the circus, dancing,

doing odd jobs etc. As a “total institution”33, this forced “ghettoisation”34, be it medieval

or modern, is the mark of exclusion.

Another dimension of this “culture of poverty” created in the stigmatised no man’s land

lying on the margins of local communities is the equally stereotypical “nomadic

culture”35.

In time as well as in space, a nomadic36 lifestyle involves deprivation to the point of

abandoning all self-respect and consequently abandoning responsibility; the nomad

people are frozen in fate and have no control over the laws imposed. To equate

freedom with release means to counterfeit reality. By ignoring the broken tolerance

threshold, the “nomads” were compelled to hit the road in order to survive the “ethnic

cleansing”.

The marginal lifestyle of the underground, internalised in cultural fundamentals as a

survival strategy, has been relatively little used in social science as a paradigm for

interpreting “the culture of poverty”.

33 Erving Goffman, "Asylums. Essay on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates”, 1961/Polirom, 2004

34 The Ghetto (for Jewish) and “Tzigania” (for Roma/ Gypsies) do not have immediate similarities, although in Eastern Europe the

same administrative term - “Mahalla” (Turkish origin) is used.

Similarly to the Occidental “Camps sites” ,“Tzigania” is a “transitory” temporary location, tolerated at the periphery of big cities

and villages, but not included in the urbanisms plans and disappearing together with the extensions of cities. In this research I

preferred the term Ghetto in a broader sense, using the modern and postmodern mechanisms of affirmation and the term’s

valences and functions.

35 “The Nomadism develops the elevate spirit of human being and educates his vast intuition (…), to inferior species, such as

Gypsies, instigates to instability, breaking his habit to constant work and developing the desire for other’s propriety inclusive

other’s women (…) to inferior species the nomadism destroys any nationalist feeling or idéea of country” - Adriano Colocci “The

Gypsies.Story of a nomadic people“ / “Gli Zingari. Storia di un popolo errante", 1889.

36 Wikipedia - the free Internet encyclopaedia considers that with the exception of “some Saami communities”, the only nomadic

people in industrialized nations are Roma and Sinti (Kalderash, Gitano/Kale), Manush, Romanichal, Irish Travellers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomad

18

It circumscribes to the deprivation theory and to the dependency cycles regularly

measured by sociologists, but focuses on the psycho-cultural abandonment,

surrendered to and internalisation of marginality.

IV.2. The “culture of poverty”

According to different studies, poverty is generalised, “universally” confirming the cultural

model of poverty analysed by Oscar Lewis37. The status of Homo Sacer beyond any

legislative norms is very similar to the contemporary distinction of underclass, a contraproductive

difference with negative effects on the reduction of the poverty phenomenon.

Historically, the Roma have coped with this by relying on charity as a

manipulation/survival technique, by bringing the value of their social identity down to the

point of insignificance and disgust, to the limits of physical and moral repugnance, in

order to prevent the onset of phobia, neurosis and violence.

A relatively recent and elitist construct, “natural” dislike was primarily based on

theological racism (non-Christian, therefore heathen, “defiled”, not baptised), then on

social Darwinism, on the idea of racial inequality, internalised as an irrational and

horrific state of physical and psychological disgust towards the impure touch. Fear of

Gypsies is a state of discomfort and insecurity induced through education, whose

cognitive and emotional mechanisms rooted in the childhood fears of the individual and

in the collective fear of the stranger, of a confined space crawling with other creatures.

Under the social guise of Gypsyphobia, Homophobia renders inherent a conceptual

development of the bases of racism, which is denied in principle as a process of social

learning, but it is always there. Portraying Otherness as diabolic and avoiding the

dysgenic intrusion of the Other involved infernal forms of punishment whose purpose

was the annihilation of identity, meant to deter any attempts of integrating into the

system.

37 Oscar Lewis, op cit.

19

This status has not been and still is not just a debate on how the political affects

exclusion policies, but the history of multiple ways of purging the body social in a

cleansing effort carried out regularly and systematically by the “host” countries.

As consequences of social control and discipline (Foucault) or “hegemony” (Gramsci),

neurosis and the anxiety to abolish the authoritarian external domination turned the

individual into a precarious “stepchild of our culture”, in Karen Horney38 and Fromm’s39

terms. Dispossessed of the identity badge the human40, making up illusory and fanciful

survival techniques in the hope of normalising “abnormality”41, the individual becomes a

“Muslim”42, a “fictional partner”43 of his/her own corporality.

I have come across the idea of a human being crushed in the anonymous and

bureaucratic workings of the state in fiction, particularly in Kafka44 and Ken Kesey’s45

writings, but I had not given any thought to the reasons of this alienation and its

traumatic consequences on the human self. Hannah Arendt’s46 Orwellian reading of

totalitarianism prompted the shocking notion of the Roma as a subject of social

cleansing policies, the same as in the writings of the classic representatives of

positivism and founders of scientific eugenics: Malthus47, Gobineau48, Francis Galton49,

Benedict Augustin Morel50, Cesare Lombroso51, Houston Stewart Chamberlain52 etc.

38 Karen Horney, “The Neurotic Personality of Our Time”, 1937/ 1998, Ed IRI, Romania

39 Erich Fromm, “The Fear of Freedom”, 1941/1998, Ed Teora, Romania; “The Art of Loving” 1956/1995, Ed Anima, Romania

40 Erving Goffman,” Asylums”, op. cit

41 Michel Foucault, “Les Anormeaux”, Gallimard, 1999

42 In Nazi camp slang, “Der Muselmann” meant a zombie, a dead man walking, one who has stopped fighting and has lost

his/her conscience and will. Probably a reference to “the literal meaning of the word in Arabic, meaning someone who

unreservedly obeys the divine will” (Giorgio Agamden, ‘Ce qui reste d’Auschwitz”, p. 53, Bibliothèque Rivages, 1999)

43 Vladimir Jankelevitch, “Le Pur et L’Impur”, ed Flammarion, 1960

44 Franz Kafka, “The Metamorphosis”, 1915, “The Trial”, 1925

45 Ken Kesey, “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, op.cit

46 Hannah Arendt, “The Origins of Totalitarianism” / “Originile totalitarismului”, Humanitas, Romania, 1994

47 Malthus, Thomas Robert, “Essay on the Principle of Population”, 1798, http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4239

48 J.A.Gobineau, “An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races”/ “Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaine (I-VI). 1853-1855,

http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/gobineau/gobineau.html

49 Francis Galton, “Hereditary Genius”, 1869, http://galton.org/books/hereditary-genius/

50 Benedict Augustin Morel, Traité des dégenerescences physiques, intellectuelles et morales de l'espèce humaine,1857 In

analogy to the Bible, Morel assumed the past existence of a perfect man or "type primitif" (Adam) who, after some external and

infernal corruption (the Fall), became susceptible to various negative influences. The resulting general enfeeblement produced

several less perfect, but still relatively healthy, human races and a number of "degenerative" genetic lines that would grow

weaker with each generation and finally die out: "Degenerations are deviations from the normal human type, which are

20

IV 3. Roma/ Gypsies and social health

In its explicative and predictive dimension, Anthropology focuses on evaluating the

chances of human being in his typological and his diversity uniqueness both predetermined

and auto- determined. In this kind of psycho –typological evaluation, the

Humans (here, the Roma) as a destined human being is defined through his attitudinal

and aptitudinal dimensions towards his vulnerability.

This is the reason why the adaptation failure gave a diversity of “Roma cultures” where

its “uniqueness” is in a continuous adaptation for survival. Called either alienation,

absurd existence, anguish, loneliness, sufferance etc. or „dysgenics”, deviance, fear,

madness all these are contradicting perspectives and mentalities; components of

human fragility and de-fragility as outbreak from humanity, deraison as Foucault call it,

they are similar with a handicap, a social illness.

In the terms of fragility, either individually or collectively, Roma are sub-destiny humans,

in a continuum temptation to compensating their psychical deficit, perceived as

inferiority or weakness and working out other techniques to survive/influence. This fact

leads to an over-compensation (fake consciousness, excessive self-esteem,

psychotically/ erred ways of life, making the individual/ group ashamed of himself and

trying a permanent readjustment of his personality.

The reasons for this personality deficit are linked with the perpetual failure of entering

into normality, a fact that predisposed to the usage of all available resources, from

transmissible by heredity and which deteriorate progressively toward extinction". He viewed mental disease primarily as a "result

of hereditary weakness". Degeneration was a hereditary phenomenon and Morel developed a detailed method of discovering the

great variety of "stigmata of degeneration" to be found among the mentally sick. These were mostly physical signs—various

malformations—but also various intellectual and moral deviations from the normal.

51 Lombroso, Cesare, “L’homme criminel. Étude anthropologique et psychiatrique”, 1895,

http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/lombroso_cesare/lombroso_cesare.html

52 Houston Stewart Chamberlain, "The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century", 1900, http://www.hschamberlain.net/index.html

21

„potlatch”53 to a development of a “economy of gift”54 as an expected inexhaustible

resource, a perpetual „Pachimos”55. Since resources are exhaustible, the individual’s

existential project falls and the individual relapses into the previous condition, in an

amplified identity disaster, as reaction to failure.

As an bio-psycho-cultural conditional alternative, the dominant culture “offer” allows in

some cases the assimilation through “socialization”. To adapt to this, the individual

enters into a disorganisation or a dissolution of his personality.

The consequences of these disharmonic practices are either nevrotical (the difficulty of

being oneself, being an “intruder”), or psychotic (the break Individual– Reality, the loss

of normative values etc.) or psychopathic ones (abnormality of psychical or physical

development). The outbreak from real and escaping to irrational – as ways to visibility

and sublimation, could be done through the particularity of the „exotic” („sangre

ardiente” – genitalization as sexual “power”, “musical people” – as mediator toward the

ecstasy, „witchcraft”/magic – as defence and threat56 methods. On the other hand, the

ethnonim itself, devalued and de- ethicised, tends to get autonomy from the “original” in

an exotic imagology ”Gypsy love”/”amor caliente”, „bohe”(mian) – as a way of life or

way of dressing, “gypsy” – zapping etc. In this sense Emir Kusturica’s movie “Time of

the gypsies” (1988) is a modern epic (cinematographic one, though) of Roma confusion

and blockage in European history.

V. Migration and exclusion. A breviary57

53 Marcel Mauss, “ Eseu despre dar”, see footnore 13 and 22

54 Georges Bataillle, “Partea blestemata”

55 Romany tradition, similar to Mauss’ “potlatch” according to which an inferior person can be re-accepted through gifts to all the

community.

56 Andrei Oisteanu, in his book “Ordine si Haos”, Ed. Polirom, 2003 documented a trail case, at the beginning of 20th century, in

Romania of some Roma women accused of “hatching bricks” with the intention to provoke a drought. These kinds of

accusations are recurrent, including the onse of provoking diseases (plague in Medieval period or exanthemas fever in the

Holocaust period).

57 For analyzing the Roma migration from the juridical point of view, in this chapter I used the expertise of jurist Dimitrina Petrova,

Executive Director of European Roma Rights Center, especially her report “The Roma: Between a Myth and the Future”,

www.errc.org,as well as Vasile Ionescu’s work, op. cit.

22

As a cultural stereotype Roma have been always considered a “nomad people” in

continuous migration, originally due to their attempt to escape the spreading of the

Islamic religion and also due to their itinerant handicrafts. Until the second half of the

XVIIIth century Slavery in Eastern Europe, namely that from the Old Romanian States

and Serbia, meant forced sedentarization for the majority of Roma. Many of them tried

to find their salvation in the Western Europe, thus the cultural shock being felt in 3

successive waves:

a). The first wave between the Crusades and the Fall of Byzantine Empire, caused by

religious racism;

b). The second wave, in the second half of the XIXth century, started after the Roma’s

slavery abolishment in the Old Romanian States (1856);

c). The third wave, the current one, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, in

response to growing discrimination and their pauperisation in Eastern Europe.

V. 1. The first migration wave - between the Crusades and the Fall of

Byzantine Empire

According to Fraser’s book58 in the Holy Roman Empire there were issued three edicts

by the Imperial Diet, in 1497, 1498, and 1500 in which Gypsies were accused of

espionage and expelled from the territory. This accusation of espionage is among the

typical charges against the newcomers. A decree from 1500 ordered that all the

Gypsies must leave German lands by Easter, and after this date it was not considered a

crime to take violent action against them. These kind of decrees set the tone for further

ordinances promulgated different rulers, such as princes, dukes preoccupied with

alleged espionage of the Gypsies and ordering their banishment from a growing number

of principalities. Overall, these measures were not effective at all, as new safe-conduct

papers continued to appear in the hands of Romani leaders. Dimitrina Petrova in her

study mentioned as example a case from 1512 when one such safe conduct was

granted by the Polish Duke Bogislav X, ruling over parts of Pomerania, to Ludwig von

58 Fraser, Angus. The Gypsies. London: Blackwell, 1995.

23

Rothenburg, count of “Little Egypt”, to help him on his way to Gdansk together with his

“zyganisch” company. According to Fraser later on, between 1544 and 1551 the Diet

issued new expulsion acts and banned all such documents in the future.

Similar events happened in the Swiss regions of the Holy Roman Empire. A Diet from

1471 in Lucerne ruled that Gypsies were not to be housed or sheltered within the Swiss

Confederation; in 1477 in actual city of Geneva (outside the confederation for that time)

a number of “Saracens” were expelled. After series of complaints that they are stealing

and are dangerous, in 1510, again at Lucerne, the “Zegynen” were banished from the

confederation and faced the penalty of hanging if they returned. In 1516 a Diet from

Berne instructed that the Gypsies must be kept out at the frontiers. Fraser mentioned

that about the same time, Geneva had also banned all the “Saracens”. These measures

did not have much effect either as soon, in 1525 a new banishment act had to be

issued, which was then reissued two years later. Yet, at a Diet in Baden in 1530, it was

noted that Gypsies were wandering about everywhere. They were once again outlawed,

but then in 1532 the question was back on the agenda, with the same rulings reinstated.

Persecution of the Gypsies in Spain and Portugal developed according to similar

patterns. In 1499, seven years after the expulsion of the Jews, a royal decree stated

that the “Egyptians” could either become sedentary and find masters within 60 days or

face expulsion (Fraser, 1995: 97). Similar measures were enacted in the Low Countries

and Italy. In Hungary, the Gypsies were treated with a greater degree of tolerance than

was usual for the time, although a form of bondage was imposed on some of them,

especially in Transylvania, where serfdom was not abolished until 1848 (Fraser, 1995:

106). Apart from their metalworking skills, the Gypsies had begun to acquire the

reputation as very good musicians in Hungary.

Despite examples of initial welcoming policies in England, anti-Gypsy legislation began

to appear towards the end of the reign of Henry VIII. The measures extended well

beyond the Gypsies to vagrancy generally, which in Tudor’s England was a pressing

problem. “Vagabondage” had been growing for years as a result of enclosure and the

24

break-up of the old system of farming, which put thousands of agricultural workers out

on the roads. Vagrants were persecuted as a matter of national priority, for, at a time

when the able-bodied poor were supposed to have masters, this large and growing

unemployed and landless population appeared to the dominant classes to be a major

threat. The most draconian Tudor statute against vagrants was that of 1547, in the first

year of Edward VI, when the prospect of a lengthy period of rule before maturity by the

booking brought with it the possibility of factional feuds and made any increase in the

size of the vagrant classes appear highly dangerous (Fraser, 1995: 114). According to a

1554 law, Gypsy nomad males had to be killed, and Elizabeth I introduced the death

penalty also for anyone who befriended “Egyptians”. In 1577, eight English were

hanged under this law. In 1541 in Scotland an Order in Council revoked all letters of

protection, safe conduct, and other privileges and banished Gypsies from the kingdom

within 30 days, on pain of death.

In Scandinavia, the Roma were first thought to be Tartars59. “Tattare” remained the

most widespread designation for the Roma in Sweden until the seventeenth century,

when “zigenare”, under the influence of German, also came into use (Fraser, 1995:

120). Anti-Gypsy laws in Sweden (1637) provided for the hanging of males. Danish

tolerance also came to an end a little more than 30 years after the first appearance of

the Roma. In 1536, and again in 1554, Christian III of Denmark and Norway ordered all

Gypsies to leave his kingdom within three months; as the enforcement failed, his son

Frederick II renewed the ban and stiffened the penalties in 1561.

Approximately 148 anti-Gypsy laws were passed in German lands between fifteenth

and eighteenth centuries. Mainz in 1714 passed a law mandating death for all Romani

males and beating and branding of females and children (Kenrick and Grattan, 1972:

42-45).

Most authors agree that the anti-Gypsy laws were not enforced expeditiously and that it

took quite a long time for repression to become the rule in the European treatment of

59Kenrick, Donald, and Grattan Puxon. The Destiny of Europe’s Gypsies. London and New York: Heinemann, 1972.

25

the nomadic Gypsies60. The same decrees had to be reissued many times in the course

of decades before they began to be eventually implemented. In France, for example,

anti-Gypsy laws banishing the “bohemians” and providing penalties if they were caught

inside the kingdom were promulgated in 1504, 1510, 1522, 1534, 1539, 1561, 1606,

1647, 1660, and 1666. Demeter sustain that this delay may be the combination of a

general negligence toward the Gypsies as a non-important and non-urgent issue, a

nuisance rather than a threat to society, which resulted in a low-intensity terror that

allowed the Roma to survive in Western Europe61. Apart from the lack of high alert when

it came to the Gypsies, slow and weak implementation of repressive measures in the

fifteenth century was perhaps also the result of the feudal fragmentation of Europe,

making law enforcement dependent exclusively on local lords (Demeter and al.,

68:2000).

With time, however, repression strengthened and anti-Gypsy laws began to be

implemented more strictly and uniformly across the territory of sovereigns, in line with

the process of nation building in modern Europe. Some of the Roma, specifically those

in Germany, were forced back eastward to escape further victimization, crossing Poland

and making inroads in Russia during the seventeenth century62.

During Ottoman rule of the Balkans, the enslavement of the Roma in the vassal

principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia lasted for almost five centuries and had a

devastating effect on the prospects for societal integration. According to Ian Hancock,

specific forms of slave-like dependency (domestic serfs, serfs belonging to churches

and monasteries, and nomadic serfs with fixed occupations) began to emerge in the

fourteenth century as a result of the increasingly strict measures taken by the landlords,

the aristocracy, and the monasteries to prevent their skilled and precious Roma labour

force from leaving their domains63. Slavery, which had affected between 200,000 and

600,000 Roma, was officially abolished by the Moldavian and Wallachian parliaments in

60 Dimitrina Petrova, “The Roma: Between a Myth and the Future”, www.errc.org,

61Demeter, Nadezhda, Nikolaj Bessonov, and Vladimir Kutenkov. Istorija tsygan: Novyj vzgljad (History of the Gypsies: A New

View). Voronezh: IPF “Voronezh,” 2000.

62 Dimitrina Petrova, op.cit.

63 Hancock, Ian. We Are the Romani People. Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2002.

26

1855 and 1856, respectively, but complete legal freedom was established only in 1864,

two years after the creation of Romania as an independent unitary state (Hancock,

2002: 18).

V.2. The second migration wave –after the Roma’s slavery abolishment in

Hapsburgic Empire and the Old Romanian States (1856)

For the Roma who live today in countries that were once part of the Habsburg Austro-

Hungarian Empire, the forced assimilation policies of Maria Theresa, the empress of

Austria, and his Son Joseph II, have left a lasting legacy64. In late eighteenth century,

speaking the Romani language and use of Romani names were criminalized and many

Romani children were taken away from their parents to be socialized in non-Romani

families. Simultaneously, as a result of a envergural actions, in France and Spain (“Le

grand renfermement”) various statistics indicates the deportation from Europe of over

1.000.000 Roma to the Latin American and African colonies.

In the early 20th century, the American Eugenic school65, particularly through the

Rockfeller Foundation (Rockfeller himself was a follower of Lombroso), endorsed and

coordinated by French Eugenicist and recipient of the Nobel Prize, Alexis Carrel66 -

started the politicisation of social cleansing policies, by drawing on the experience of

colonialism and apartheid67 (abolished in the ‘60s).

64 Dimitrina Petrova, op.cit.

65 H. H. Goddard, “The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness”, 1912

http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Goddard/, Arthur H. Estabrook, Poverty and Degeneracy, The Jukes, 1916, Frank H. Hankins,

"Birth Control and the Racial Future”,1931, see also http://www.statelib.lib.in.us/www/isl/indiana/eugenics.html etc.

66

67 Alexis de Tocqueville, in “Democracy in America”, the well-known book on civilization’s virtues and American democracy,

deals with black people slavery and unaccountable tolerance, the author being rather concerned about the psychological relation

between slave and owner. The scene where he describes the disdain of the white child towards the black nanny suggests

metaphorically that the racism is inborn. The slavery abolishment in America did not imply the black people and Amerindians’

inclusion to democratic rights, but apartheid by separating white and black people on racial criteria. Significant is the fact that the

apartheid abolishment in South Africa – former German colony, was taking place after 1990s, fact that can be meant not just a

Nazism survival, but a continuum of racist nationalized mentalities.

27

As result, Alexis Carrel, program coordinator of the Rockfeller Foundation, funded 35

Nazi eugenic programs, being also the author of “L’Homme, cet inconnu” (1935), a

manifesto in praise of Nazism. Many of the medical doctors supported financially by the

Rockfeller Foundation worked in Nazi Germany or held high office in Fascist

governments, particularly in Romania and Croatia; these countries rank second (after

Germany) in the top of atrocities committed during ethnic cleansing programs. This

American “input”, including co-operation with the Fascist dictator Ante Pavlic, is

insufficiently documented and required further research.

Birth control through sterilisation, started in the U.S. and taken over by European

countries, eventually became a state policy in Nazi Germany. The confinement of

“dysgenic” Roma to camps surrounded by barbed wire fences, “Dr. Eugen Fischer’s

innovation”68, forced labour and massacres took place not only in Germany and satellite

countries (particularly Romania and Croatia), but throughout Europe. In 1924,

Switzerland resurrected the absolutism of Hapsburg rulers Maria Theresa and Joseph II

and confined Roma children to orphanages; this situation lasted for a long time after the

end of the war (up to 1974). According to estimates 500,000 to 700,000 Roma were

killed in the Second World War Holocaust against Jews and Roma.

V.3. The third migration wave - from the collapse of Communism until today

The crash of Communism showed that the egalitarian policies so vehemently upheld

had been nothing else but a way of hiding the problem. Roma poverty deepened to the

extreme limit of survival, as a consequence of the Roma being used as cheap labour

force in huge, state-owned industrial facilities and in state-managed agriculture.

68 Eugen Fischer, “Human Hereditary Teaching and Racial Hygiene”, 1913. Fischer's ideas of a German supreme race and the

ideas for concentration camps, which he had acquired by observing how German soldier wiped out the Namibian tribe Herero in

1904-1907, inspired Adolf Hitler to write Mein Kampf (2, 3, 9, 19, 22, 30, 31, 32, 37, 41, 46, 50 chapters) Before Hitler came to

power in 1925, Dr. Fischer was the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics and Eugenics. One

of Dr. Fischer's students was Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd who went back to South Africa and became the drafter of Apartheid (1948-

1990) and Prime Minister of South Africa.

28

Against the anomic background of a general social and economic collapse, competition

for resources meant the exclusion of the Roma and the gradual blocking of their access

to civil rights. In the context of an infant democracy, institutionalised neglect and a

sometimes discriminatory legislation (the Land Law, the Education Act etc.) have led to

a violent recrudescence of discrimination and racism. As a consequence of noninclusion

in public policies and as an alternative to the indifference of state institutions, a

significant part of the Roma population, lacking any opportunities for personal and

collective development, was forced to adapt its survival techniques. The first

manifestation of the crisis was migration, first internal / domestic, then to Europe.

In the line with this policies to eradicate the continuous Roma migration phenomenon in

Europe, one of the first European institution documents (Council of Europe) referrers

just to the Roma nomad population, in order to address the issue of citizenship and

combat apartheid69. As result of Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe

(CLRAE) a series of Recommendations and Resolutions aroused, culminating with the

Recommendation 1203/1993, regarding the situation of Roma in Europe. This

Recommendation focused on the necessity to condemn different form of discrimination,

as measure to stop migration of Roma. After this date, Council of Europe established a

Working Group in order focus their reflection on Roma from the ethnic rights perspective

recording70 that “from juridical point of view, in some of the member states the Roma

community is not yet considered minority group, ethnic or national minority, and hence

not benefiting at all of any rights that this status offer”.

In fact, the ambiguous status of Roma and the approach of Roma issue in terms of

international law is an historical prominence of ethnic; therefore local and central

institutions’ hegemonic groups legitimize their sovereign power on Roma deciding

69 Recommendation 563 (1969) on the Situation of Gypsies and Other Travellers in Europe; Resolution n° (1975) 13 Containing

Recommendations on the Social Situation of Nomads in Europe; Recommendation n° R (1983) 1of the Committee of Ministers

to member states on Stateless Nomads and Nomads of Undetermined Nationality ; Resolution 125 (1981) on the Role and

Responsibility of Local and Regional Authorities in regard to the cultural and Social Problems of Populations of Nomadic Origin

etc.

70 The Report “The juridical situation of Roam in Europe, Raporteur: Dl. Csaba Tabajdi, Hungary, Socialist Group, Doc. No. 9397,

26 of March 2002, http://www.romanothan.ro/romana/cadrujuridic/intern/ce/doc_ref_rromi/ad_parl/rec_1557.htm

29

expulsions, ethnic cleansings, Holocaust, non inclusion in public policies. Juridically,

from the perspective of social, economic and cultural rights recognizing this massive

ethnic group by European states is more an exception from the rule, just six European

states grant them - in different forms, juridical rights reserved to ethnic minorities.

In the context of the new re-ordering of Europe, the Roma are treated as a “common

European legacy”, a “European minority”, and have become a topic for reflection for

European institutions, as well as one of the political criteria for accession. The absence

from public discourse of the necessity to implement programs and projects meant to

fight social exclusion and racial discrimination against the Roma, involving the political

will of public administration, has become a constant concern for international

institutions, as proved by the significant number of regulations issued as the premises of

a new approach.

VI. Roma and the political culture – an emergent perspective

In 1990s the recognition and accession of Roma from the post-communist countries to

their own identity (representing two thirds from the total number of Roma in Europe)

meant also a attempt to create Roma representation structures and to negotiate public

policies, fact that led to existence of some Roma non governmental organisations from

which a political elite arose. Studies from that period71 mentioned a latent conflict

between” traditional” leaders and “modern” ones, emphasising the collective strategies

in the crystallization process and development of a viable ethnical and political identity.

In reality the synthesis of values’ discourse - the synthesis of “tradition” with “modernity”

norms, makes the object of a view conflict between Roma political organizations and

(“the integrationists”) – accepted by governmental states and NGOs (“the autonomists”)

– accepted by international institutions.

- “the integrationists”, correspondent to the “culture of obedience politics” supporters

of status-quo, they represent the actual Roma “political class”. Competitors for social

71 Liegeois, Jean-Pierre and Gheorghe, Nicolae, “Roma/Gypsies: A European Minority”, London, MRG International, 1993,

updated in 1995) and Andrej Mirga & Nicolae Gheorghe “The Roma in the Twenty-First Century: A Policy Paper”, PER,1997.

30

representation resources they resort to obedient strategy in consonance with

hegemonic groups’ expectations. Perpetuating the anticipate Alterity, the only

negotiation stake is identity compromise as either political identity or cultural identity –

therefore they are coagulating hierarchies, collective senses or resorting to fictional self

representations with stratification on clans or ethnical sub-groups criteria (e.g. King,

Bulinasha, Emperor, Roma Parliamentary etc.).

- “the autonomists”, correspondent to the “culture of participative politics”, supporters

of integration through emancipation, represented by the civil society”, advocates for an

historical emergence, promoters of local and global more or less utopian development

programmes. For them the priorities are to minimise the ethnic stigma, combating

discrimination and social exclusion, to overtake the virtual identity and to impose an

effective image of Roma and also to establish a relation between Roma and state

institutions in order to impose the inclusion of Roma issue in terms of political/social

citizenship.

-“the poor” 72,correspondent to the “culture of patriarchal politics”, supporters of

individualist strategies. For them, the absence of coherent public policies lead to civic

and ethnic responsibility’s abandonment, manifested through non-involvement and civic

absenteeism. Unfortunately, this group is constituted by an augmentative majority of

Roma.

Given the present conditions of “ethicised poverty” and increasing social exclusion in

the Eastern Europe and Balkan countries, the continuous Roma migration lead to the

reinforcement of some archaic surviving techniques as the adaptation niches to the new

requirements: „fortune telling73”, beggary74, small „tolerated”75 criminality (larcenies 76,

prostitution77, black-market78 etc.).

72 The term makes historical reference to the name that some “fatalist” heretical sects were known in the Christian Antiquity and

the Middle, among them what we call now the Roma: “the poor” /”the prayers”/ ”the beggars”. Saint Augustine banter their faith –

according to which they must not do nothing but glorify God through singing, being recompensed with food. First evidence of

their existence in Europe is that they were penitents on the biggest pilgrimage routes to Saint-James de Compostelle.

73 Otherwise the magician (Zoroastrian) origin of the “Athinganoi” heresy (name that Roma were known of in Byzantine empire)

is indubitable. First European documents referring to Roma “immigranta” early in Renaissance period mentioned that the women

practiced witchcraft.

31

This is specific not just to Roma but to immigrants that periodical return to a space of

origin, re -investing parts of their accumulated resources in building occidental houses,

establishing new alliances by christening children or being god-fathers to wedding

ceremonies in order to gain a new and better status. Although their role in the

community is suspended because of the “auto-exile”, the power and social prestige

achieved when they return (even in cases of being forced to come back in the country of

origin!) insure them of a reinsertion on the basis of achieved status, not the anterior one

(see the footnote on “Pachimos”).

The absence of collective79 representation structures, a characteristic of non-territorial

ethnic groups implies a perpetual egocentrically competition for resources, prestige and

goods’ acquisition. The states’ reluctance to support Roma affiliation to another status

group means that “empowerment” belongs and it is exercised by the entire body social

and not by qualified elite.

According to Vasile Ionescu, to these three “views” of Roma recent (re) structures and

political identity polarities on predefined “schemes” corresponds the three “Weberian”

74 Roma travelling on European pilgrimages routes can be explained by the moral and canonical obligation of big cities that were

on the pilgrimage route to offer food to pilgrims (see also The Visit of the Gypsies, Franco-Flemish tapestry produced in Tournai,

1500-1510). To be more convincing they appealed to “Salvconducts” (permit of free passing) that were awarded by kings in

exchange of recognising them as vassals. See the “salvconduct” of Sigismund Bathory, 1418.

75 Inspired by Byzantine legislation “Vasile Lupu’s law”, 1646 was copied in the following legislations until Roma slavery

abolishment in Romania (1856): "The Gypsy, his wife or his child to be forgiven if they will be stealing once or twice or three

times a chicken, duck or any other small thing; but if a bigger thing is stolen, then to be judged as any other crime ".

76 Roma brigandage is not enough researched. The dreaded Scaramuccia, the model of terror in one of Leonardo Da Vinci’s

drawings (1505) became a comic character in Italian culture and then a sort of Robin Hood called Scaramouche by French

people, in a “cape and spade” serial movie. In German space “The thieves”(Schiller), “Zigeuner Baron” (Strauss) stays in the

same romantic picture of the ”freedom fighter”. Much better represented as thieves are Roma women: Carravaggio, “La diseuse

de bonne aventure”(1584), Vouet (1617), Georges de la Tour (1632) etc.

77 Until the end of 16th century the exotic beauty of Roma women was hidden under the moral value, either as gracious “gypsy

witch” (see footnote 17), or as Madonna: Titian, “Gypsy Madonna”, 1510, Correggio, “Madonna Zingarella”, 1515 etc. After this

period the reason of the “exotic” was replaced by “landscape with gypsies” Roma woman occupying the place of “hot gypsy” as

erotic fantasy.

78 With the exception of music, all the Roma “nomad” crafts were more utilitarian then artisan; they were specialized in utensils

production especially on menial and agricultural ones, made from wood or metal: spoons, pots, agricultural tools etc. and

disappearing when industrialization came, being replaced by series products. Although Roma were massively worked in

agriculture and industry as cheep labour a great part of Roma are practicing various forms of retail or sells “second hand”

products - an occupational o niche tolerated by state but sanctioned by public opinion (as reminiscent of residual Anti- Jewish

mentalities).

79 Vasile Ionescu, op. cit. See also Almond, Gabriel A., Sidney, Verba, “Civic culture”/“Cultura civică”, Editura Du Style,

Bucureşti, 1996

32

forms of authority/domination”: traditional domination, charismatic domination (Roma

nongovernmental organizations) and legal domination (Roma party).

- in traditional authority, the legitimacy of the authority comes from tradition (conflict

within status groups) – group: “the poor”, representatives: Bulibasha and other leaders

(Papurea, Krisinitor, Witch), models: without a well defined position on the political

map;

- in charismatic authority comes from the personality and leadership qualities of the

individual (conflict within class) – group: “the autonomists” representatives: local

nongovernmental Roma leaders, Roma and non-Roma representatives of local political

opposition, models: Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King - position on the political map

– center;

- in rational-legal authority from powers that are bureaucratically and legally attached to

certain positions (conflict within ethnic party organizations) – group: “the integrationists”

representatives: Roma and non- Roma representatives of local authorities, Roma and

Roma political leaders, models: Stalin, Fidel Castro - position on the political map: left

center.

Although it is attributed to Roma themselves, this “relapse into history” instigated by the

successive degringolade of Roma representation structures, is actually a historical

strategy of governmental states to temporize the approval of measure packages for

Roma. Unpopularity of all the public policies dedicated to Roma are sanctioned through

a negative vote by the dominant group and this is the explanation of the governments’

tergiversation for implementing international related norms, including the Decade of

Roma Inclusion.

33

VII. An update of public policies for improving the situation of

Roma in Europe

The early 21st century is marked by the resurrection of Nietzsche’s disappointment with

the pettiness of humanist ideology by philosopher Peter Sloterdjik80; starting from the

phenomenological debate between Sartre81 and Heidegger82, Sloterdjik reiterates the

idea that since the Ancients, Humanism has been condoning the imperfection of

Humankind. Such a conciliatory attitude has led to the falsification of human relations

and to the influence of Humanism on political and social links being relegated to a

position which in today’s modern, global societies is marginal at best. According to him,

one solution could be “the taming of humankind”, anthropotechnics (the “new man”

being manufactured by fellow humans), or biotechnology83; ethics would thus be

reconciled with science and technology, starting from the very roots of political

philosophy, of the ideal city envisaged by Plato84 and Aristotle85.

Therefore, a new Humanism, an Eugenism grounded in and once again rendered

legitimate by the bio-political state (Foucault), ignoring the negative experience of

Nazism is emerging. Perpetual victims of a criminal state86, in the absence of a social

capital of bargaining (protective legislation, communication networks, self-determination

etc.), the Roma (are entitled to) feel directly threatened by the bio-political body of the

global Leviathan, on the brink of an inexorable relapse into history. The ethnicisation of

poverty and economic dependence as a new apartheid87 are considered to be similar to

80 “L’affaire Sloterdijk”, Revue electronique “Multitude” http://multitudes.samizdat.net/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=191and Peter

Sloterdjik, “Rules for the People Park” / “Reguli pentru parcul uman“, Humanitas, 2003

81 J.P. Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism” / L’existentialisme c’ est un humanisme, 1946,

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm

82 Martin Heidegger, ”Lettre sur l’humanisme”, 1946, in Martin Heidegger, “Landmarks in Thinking” / “Repere pe drumul gândirii”,

Ed. Politica, 1987

83 Francis Fukuyama, “Our Posthuman Future. Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution” / “Viitorul nostru postuman.

Natura umana si refacerea ordinii sociale”, Humanitas, Romania, 2002

84 Plato, “The Republic” / “Republica”, Humanitas, Romania, 1993

85 Aristotle, “Politics” / “Politica”, Humanitas, Romania, 1994

86 Yves Ternon, “The Criminal State. Genocide in the 20th Century” / “Statul criminal. Genocidurile secolului XX”, Institutul

European, Romania, 2002

87 American criminologists Randall G. Shelden and William B. Brown, in “The New American Apartheid”

http://www.sheldensays.com/ investigate the reasons for the increased number of convicts in American prisons

34

the time before the Holocaust, as a breaking point between the “two worlds” (Centre

versus Periphery). This fear is by no means groundless, given the absence of any

evidence guaranteeing that, unlike all previous times of major change in human history,

this new social order includes the Roma, too.

The efforts of the European Institutions and national governments during recent years

have had a limited impact on improving living conditions of Roma in Eastern Europe.

Positive steps forward were taken, in particular by the European Commission, that

acted as a catalyst for changes adopted at the level of national legislation and for the

establishment of anti-discrimination laws and bodies. The OSCE Action Plan on

Improving the Situation of Roma and Sinti in the OSCE Area88, as well as initiatives of

the Council of Europe, have contributed to awareness rising and have influenced

policies of national governments in regard to Roma.

During the last years, at the Finland Presidency’s initiative, the Council of Europe has

supported the formation of a European Roma Forum as a possible partner in

elaborating and implementing public policies in member states.

At the European Union level, the Roma issue is the object of incipient debates,

especially in the filed of Roma migration from East towards EU states and also on the

issue of poverty reduction through Strategies for Social Protection and Social Inclusion,

within the Directorate General Employment and Social Affairs.

As with regard to the EU states that adhered in past couple of years or are in the

process of accession, the improving of the situation of Roma was part of the political

pre-accession criteria (Copenhagen Criteria). The fulfilment of these criteria was not

closed monitored, a very relevant fact for this case being Slovakia89. A recent evaluation

of the funds directed by MS to improve the situation of Roma, to amount to 270 millions

Euro between 2000 – 2005, arouse series of protests from Roma civil society,

denouncing that the amounts were used to infrastructures instead for real improvements

88 http://www.osce.org/documents/odihr/2003/11/1562_en.pdf

89 In February 2004, Slovakia – who joined the European Union three months later, on 1 May 2004, mobilised its entire 20. 000

strong police force during protests by the Roma ghetto in Trebisov, who were protesting against social benefit cuts. Slovakian

Roma suffers treacherously high unemployment rates - up to 100% in some villages - and face widespread discrimination.

35

of Roma situation. Some Roma social activists and civil society leaders claim that Phare

funds for improving the situation of Roma were directed on “non- discrimination” criteria,

considering that the poverty is generalized, not ethnical.90

Similarly, an analysis of the implementation structures of the Decade of Roma

inclusion91, which differ significantly from one country to another and are subject to

constant readjustment, led me to understand that something important is at stake, even

if the resources allocated and the viability of structures is poor: the intense dispute is

whether these are control structures belonging to the states or desirable structures of

identity/ethnicity formation and representation.

The Decade has been highly politicised in all of the cases, as governments tend to

favour obedient organisations and split cohesion and social layering, claiming to

stimulate either competition or representation.

Separating the Decade implementation process, the problem into tradition vs.

Modernity, meant a fracture with the “past”, in the sense of a deliberate exclusion of

leaders on age criteria and academic achievements, promoting young Roma.

Publicity for the Decade and its premises has created a double disappointment: the

majority population disapproved of these affirmative measures and forced governments,

by threatening not to vote for them, to cease funding and to delay implementation; on

the other hand,. Roma civil society understood that the program is aimed only at

extremely poor local communities and does not aim to improve that ethnic status or

strengthen the role of the Roma in the identification of their own priority needs, and saw

90 As an example, it is considered that the funds were used for utilising the local surgeries with high technology, building or

renovating of bridges and schools excepting just the road that go to Roma communities, the schools from ghettos, and limit the

water or gas pipe line on the edge of Roma communities.

91 The Decade of Roma Inclusion, a initiative supported by major international actors, including the World Bank, the EU, United

Nation Development Programme (UNDP), Council of Europe (CoE), Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe

(OSCE) and Open Society Institute (OSI), represents renewed political will on the part of the eight governments with large Roma

populations (Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, FYR Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, and Slovakia)

to overcome the gap in opportunities and living conditions between Roma and non-Roma through targeted and coordinated

action over a 10 year period.

36

this as an opportunity to level general criticism, with data and numbers from the World

Bank Report, against disastrous social and economic conditions.

The de-ethnicization and the local decentralization of the Roma Decade could be a

solution to change the governments' non-combat attitude and make them react. Subject

to pressure from both sides – Roma and non- Roma citizens, the governments would be

forced to take action, becoming a referee neglected by both parties.

In this sense, the East – West migration of the Roma qualifies as an exodus, and most

of the Roma prefer to relinquish their identity and therefore to become invisible.

Although insignificant in terms of numbers, those that prefer to remain “visible” fail to

match their professional skills to the demands of the European labour market and have

to resort to welfare services or to other means.

VIII. Facts and findings

A very important component of this research is the field trips and data collection.

Between June/ July and December 2005 I conducted semi-structured interviews in

Roma communities with high level of migration - in origin countries such as Albania,

Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Romania and Serbia & Montenegro.

366 questionnaires and 183 in depth interviews were conducted in Roma camps,

ghettos and settlements with Roma migrants in the following migration countries:

Belgium, Spain, United Kingdom until December 2005 and then Italy and France in the

first part of 2006.

The questionnaire (Annex 1) was structured in 6 parts as follows: the socio- economic

background, education and training, employment and work, living conditions/ income,

social networks and discrimination & exclusion.

37

Barring in mind that the migration phenomenon is not exclusive to Roma, migration is

neither a new phenomenon nor a failure of development. When people move, they do

so over varying distances, for different periods of time and for different reasons.

Migration is undertaken by energetic and resourceful individuals who move as part of

their effort to improve their lives and the lives of their families, or to flee disaster or

famine. It is an economic, social and political process that affects those who move and

those who stay behind.

Migrants are people who, in an effort to improve their lives,

move, for a temporary or permanent period, from their place of

birth, and who do not necessarily enjoy the same rights and

entitlements available to non- migrant individuals of that place.92

According to the interviews results, 60% from the interviewed Roma said that poor

economic condition lead them to migration, 30% said that they were forced to leave

due to political condition and 10% identified discrimination and negative image of

Roma in their countries of origin as reason to made them leave.

62% per cent of Roma migrants surveyed were found to be “illegal residents”, either

because they described their status as “visa expired” or because the data clearly

suggested they had overstayed their visa, or their reported immigration status was not

technically possible.

92 Definition developed by DFID to encompass the range of movement undertaken by poor people

I choose to leave for the UK because I do not have other chance home. I was looking for work for

more than 2 years without results. Who do you think will leave from home, away from their family, if

there will be other chances at home? (M.T., 21 years, North Hampton, UK)

I needed to follow my husband, as he came in here 3 years ago. The children missed him much and

he himself could not stay without them any longer. It is a hard life but at least we are together. (A.B.,

33 years, Brussels, Belgium)

My friends helped me get here. I had weekly scandals home with Gadge as they did not allow us to

enter the disco/ clubs. Here we can go wherever we want to, no one tell us anything nor forbids us

to enter restaurants or clubs. (G.D., 26 years, Rome, Italy)

38

Respondents’ earnings were relatively low compared with the national average for

their occupation. Across all sectors, migrants were working longer basic hours and

longer total hours than average for their occupation. For those in hospitality and au

pairs, overtime was not always paid. Less than half of those in hospitality and

agriculture, and only 15 per cent of employees in construction, received paid holidays.

Less than a third of all employees received paid sick leave. None of the survey

respondents was a member of a trade union.

I don’t earn much. I am paid less than anyone who works in this field. My employer knows I am

coming from Albania and that I am illegal in here. He told me: you don’t like it, ok, we will find

someone else in your place, as there are hundreds as you out there. Therefore, I decided to

stay… (G.P., 39 years, Naples, Italy)

I have a work permit in here, I am legal but there are a few as me. Most of the immigrants from

here are illegal. Most of them are begging on the street. (I.T., 28 years, Paris, France)

I am a builder and it took me awhile to learn this job. I still do not have papers, I am here on a fake

Hungarian passport, but I speak Italian good so, if someone asks me, I say I am half Italian half

Hungarian and I use to leave there since I was 18 years old… No one ask me more when I say

this. (I.V. 42 years, Rome, Italy)

I am musician and I cannot say that for me it was so difficult as it was for others, here. You see, I

have my job and my skills that helped me, so I managed to find a job in a restaurant. I am playing

each night and I earn nice amounts (…). There are many talented musicians that play in the

underground. Poor them, they did not have my luck! ( V.T., 49 years, Montparnasse/ Paris,

France)

Back home, I have 7 people to support. I earn enough to send home and to support myself in

here. I work a lot but I know that at least in here I have a chance – back home I couldn’t do that,

as no one wanted me to work for them…Even if I know my job well, I have a too dark skin and

there were afraid of me. (G.M., 53 years, Leeds, UK)

39

25% from the interviewed said that are visiting their home countries regularly while

80% said that the are willing to go back home if they are offered a better chance and the

economic conditions will change for them there.

The lack of qualifications or skill level of many of those interviewed significantly

reduced the possibility of getting good jobs. 56% of respondents are working illegally in

jobs like house keeping, constructions, ambulant musicians, begging). 76% of them

described their language abilities as adequate or poor.

I am going back home every 3 months, so that I wouldn’t break the law and be illegal here. On

these occasions I see my friends and organize big parties with good music and then I come back

here to earn my money that I spent there… (N.N. 24 years, Brussels, Belgium)

All of us here go home regularly. Either to see our families or to send thinks that we earn or find

here. There are a few of us that cannot go home, either because they are illegal or because they

have problems with the Police back home. (I.O., 44 years, Lille, France)

Some times, rarely, we go out for a beer, just like between boys, you know (…). We have fun

between ourselves: listening good music brought from and crying for our destiny, that we would

like to go home(…). If things will improve, we will definitely going to go back. We would not stay

among strangers all our life!… (V.S., 37 years, London, UK)

It was very hard at the beginning, as I did not know the language at all. Now, after 4 years I am

responsible with cleaning in a small hotel. I like my work and I am very proud of my

achievements. My family is proud and I sent pictures home to show to all my families and

neighbours. I send money home, monthly. I would love to find a foreigner to marry, so that I

would not be illegal. We will see … (C.M., 28 years, Brighton, UK)

As a woman it was much easier to find work. For men is harder, especially that our men (Roma)

since they are confronted with prejudices such as Roma steal, they are not serious worlers and

so on. (U.P. 39 years, Cordoba, Spain)

Education of my children is the important thing, you know. It was very hard for them at the

beginning, as they did not spoke the language and we did not know to help. We were lucky with

these students and charities coming daily and do homeworks with them. Now my oldest girl is

among the first three in her class. (E.R. 37 years, Naples, Italy)

40

The link between migration and poverty is complex and dependent on the specific

circumstances in which it takes place. Migration can both cause and be caused by

poverty. Poverty can be alleviated as well as exacerbated by migration. In Romania (

Craiova county), for example, migration to the UK and Northern Ireland has caused

wages to rise and improved the economic situation of those left behind. In other

situations, migration can lead to the economic and social demise of a community.

Migration can lead to benefits for poor people and developing countries. For individuals

and their families, migration can increase income, lead to new skills, improve social

status, build assets and improve quality of life. 35% of the respondents say that they are

better economically than they first came to the migration country.

For communities and developing countries, migration can relieve labour market and

political pressures, result in increased trade and direct investment from abroad, lead to

a positive Diaspora activity such as money being sent home (remittances), promote

social and political change and lead to the eventual return of successful migrants who

invest in their country of origin. 95% of the interviews send money home regularly and

30% changed their religion, as result of migration.

While working in Spain I experienced many things - the way people treat a dependent or

independent woman. I have gained much experience and my confidence has grown. Now, I

have a say in decision-making at home. My husband does not shout at me. I have bought a

piece of land and four rickshaws and I am creating a means of livelihood for four other

families….(T.R., 42 years, Valencia, Spain)

I came alone here 9 years ago. Now all my family is with me, including my old mother who

suffers from cancer. She has here everything she needs, including treatment for her cancer. Do

you thing that at home I could have offered her this? (M.D., 45 years, Manchester, UK)

Since I came here I have learned lot of things, including to work on computer – as I needed to

speak to my family from home and to see them on camera, as it was cheaper. Now they have

computer back home and the children teaches us IT, as they are experts now in all these new

technologies. (T.M. 47 years, Paris, France)

41

VIII. 1. Migration facts

• Poverty reduction – through remittances and other migrant activities, the incomes of

individual migrants and their families rise. Remittances invested in rural and urban

communities can support the economy and create jobs.

According to the UNDP report93 Roma are among the poorest in all countries of the

region. 44% of Roma households live in poverty, and of these 15% live in extreme

poverty. Roma fall into deeper poverty than other populations, and income inequalities

are more pronounced among the Roma than among the majority populations. Poor

Roma households spend more on food and the least on education, making it difficult for

young Roma to better their circumstances.

According to the data collected, 60% from the interviewed Roma said that poor

economic condition lead them to migration, 30% said that they were forced to leave

due to political condition and 10% identified discrimination and negative image of

Roma in their countries of origin as reason to make them leave.

Displacement brings a double shock: in addition to becoming refugees or IDPs, the

displaced people lose their middle-class status and find themselves among the most

excluded ones in society. According to the UNDP report on Roma IDPs, the displaced in

93 The Roma in central and Eastern Europe – Avoiding the dependency trap, UNDP, 2004

I managed in 5 years of work to open my own company back in Albania, to buy a beautiful

car, and to rebuild my mother’s house from cratch. There are others in Korce/ Albania that

succeeded as I did and it is much better than it was before in our community. I am thinking

now to go back home and extend my business. Now that I am thinking, it was worthwhile

the misery and hard life I suffered here … (F.V. 33 years, Rome, Italy)

We are all sending money home, at least twice a month. Some of them to invest back

home, some to support their poor families. (I.D., 56 years, Madrid, Spain)

My family and I converted to Pentecostals. Is much better, the church helps us and we pray

Jesus for a better life. Our brothers from church come to us, in our camps and read with us

from the Bible, we are singing together and it is nice. Recently we got a smart Roma who

translates the songs into Romani and our guys play instruments and it is like our Roma

music, but with religious lyrics. It is great! (I.E. 31 years, Essex, UK)

42

Serbia are particularly vulnerable, with two fifths of internally displaced persons living in

poverty and more than one in six living in extreme poverty. The same report states that

IDPs are generally more vulnerable to poverty than refugees. Some of the displaced

people, IDPs in particular, are Roma and are doubly vulnerable, with a poverty rate of

49 % compared to 17 % of non-Roma displaced94.

See this bottle? It’s poison … If the people from the Town Hall come to evict us from here, I will drink this

and kill myself. At least I will do it so that my children will be able to stay here, to have a better life than

back home. (M.O., 62 years, Newchatell, France)

I run away from forced eviction in Romania and I faced the same problem in here, again, my dear! t I

have been forced to leave my house in Bucharest where I life for more than 13 years. I came here to my

family and look, the Gadge / non-Roma people want us to leave by tomorrow morning. They say that we

are staying on their land and it is too much dirt and filthiness. Do you think that are they offering us

anything instead? No, they do not care where we go … with small children, old people… we start all over

again, as our ancestors with their nomadic life, this is how we life in 2006. (L.P., 28 years, Naples, Italy)

I am asking you: would you live in these conditions at all? I believe not … But look, we do not have a

choice but to stay like this: 12 people in 2 small rooms and 450 souls in a camp site that was made to

accommodate just 120 people… Without toilets, just 4 shower rooms for 450 people with new born babies

and toddlers. We cannot go back in Kosovo because we will get killed. They hate us because we are

Roma and they think we are pro Serbs. (D.T., 51 years, Rome, Italy)

• Gender equality – greater equality between men and women can occur when women

migrate and achieve more independence. On the other hand vulnerability to human

trafficking and failure to become part of the society in their new location can make

women more dependent on male relatives and less able to be independent or have a

say in how things are done95

Do you see those three girls? Now they are sleeping in an abandoned car; we give them food as they are

line us – Roma, we cannot leave them like that. They are illegally here, they have been smuggled into the

country and they just escaped from that mad man who was trafficking them for prostitution. (B.I., 47

years, Madrid, Spain)

• Health – women and men face health risks during and after migration, both through

contracting diseases and experiencing problems in accessing health services. 80% of

interviewees state that living in a foreign country is hard and stressful.

94 At Risk: Roma and the Displaced Southeast Europe, UNDP, June 2006

95 The Millennium Development Goals and Migration, International Organisation for Migration, 2005

43

Who would come and help us? There are some organizations which provide us with daily bread and milk

for children. The Town Hall wants to come and evict us from here, as they say there are lots of complains

from the neighbours’ because we are loud and the camp site does not look good for the town… On top of

that, if there are Gypsy camps near their house, the prices for selling the house will drop.

I am suffering of heart disease and no one can do anything for me in here, as I am illegal. If I go home, I

do not have any rights there either, as I never worked in Serbia and I cannot benefit from health

insurance. I will die as a dog with all these policies you are speaking about. No one cares about us, the

poor ones. (Y.G. 43 years, Sussex,UK)

• Education – child migrants and children of migrants (whether they move or stay

behind) often find that they are unable to attend school. Few provisions are made for

educating children who do not stay in one place throughout the year or who move

permanently. However, children may also migrate in order to get access to education

and receipt of remittances can allow children to attend school.

I would stay here as much as needed to be able to educate my child as best as I can. I have been here

for 5 years now and my boy speaks three languages – Spanish, Romanian and Romani. Back home I

cannot offer that, as he is called the crow at school and children laugh on him because he is black. That

is why I am struggling here for him. (E.V. 31 years, Cordoba, Spain)

My girl, she is 13 and she does not go to school, as the closest school here is 50 minutes waking. The

same situation is with other 56 children in this ghetto. A family who owns a car here droved their children

to school, but the children said they cannot understand a think there and no one was here for them to

help with homework, so they quit. They are earning money now in Napoli, begging in the streets or

washing car windows. (F.G. 40 years, Naples, Italy)

Discrimination – although just 10% of interviewed Roma cited ethnic discrimination

and negative prejudices as a significant barrier to social inclusion and the main reason

for their migration, it is well known huge level of discrimination against Roma in Europe

(see chapter V and VI). According to the interviews made, significant number of Roma

perceive as normality to be subject of discrimination because of their ethnic

background.

I am not feeling as discriminated against as I was feeling at home. In the West, the discrimination is more

subtle, no one calls you a Gypsy. You do feel rejected, as we do not have access to services such as

health or labour market. But it is better than hone, where even toddlers are taught to be afraid of us

(Roma). (T.C., 25 years, Brussels, Belgium)

When we are more than three on the street, people are avoiding us – that is why we tend to be only in

groups of three, or less, so that we don’t risk the police coming and considering us thieves or something.

(R.D.29 years, London, UK)

44

• Living conditions

88% from interviewed persons live in collective centres, camp sites or in dilapidated

houses and shacks. Dwellings are overcrowded and lack basic infrastructure. 60% of

them live without access to an indoor toilet; similar proportions live without access to a

bathroom or proper sewerage.

Here is better than in other Roma sites, as they gave us this block of flats they did not use anymore. It’s

damp, but that’s ok with us. We were 80 families, but now we are 130. We cannot evict the new comers,

as they are families of the ones who came here first. (I.I.47 years, Rome, Italy)

We need to travel for one hour and a half to get to work, daily. This place is quite dangerous for children,

as we are so close to the motorway and here the cars run with 300 Km per hour. Last year four children

were killed in car accidents. (D.L., 34 years, Naples, Italy)

• Networking

We live here among ourselves; we keep our traditions, the language, exactly as we did home. The only

difference is that we are here from different countries, as well. There, up on the hill, are Albanian Roma.

The ones from Romania are the first ones, right at the entrance of the campus. And we, the Serbian

Roma are here. We get on well with each other, just some times we argue because of the children.

(O.T.55 years, Rome, Italy)

I don’t have any networks, except with my relatives. Since I am here, the only friend I have is a Scottish

man who helped me get the job. (E.T., 29 years, London, UK)

There are some people here who changed their religion. The brothers from the church are coming often;

they help Roma with a piece of advice, medicines or the homework for children. They asked us to join

them, but I am not sure, we might, later on… (F.I, 31 years, Brussels, Belgium)

• Political involvement

I don’t know of anyone to go and vote from this community when there were elections in our home

countries. I did not go, either. What for? Back home no one is thinking of us or of our problems no matter

whom we might vote for. (V.I., 51 years, London, UK)

I do not know about any Roma Decade and I am not interested in this, either. Nowadays if you do not

manage yourself no one is coming to offer any help. The world is a jungle: you fight and win or you are

destroyed step by step. (L.P.34 years, Cordoba, Spain)

I am not interested in politics, in what they say they are doing for us. Since ever, no one has come to me

to offer me a job or any other kind of help. I needed to fight by myself, you know. Why should I be

interested in politics? (T.I., 26 years, Brussels, Belgium)

45

• Employment

According to the UNDP report, measured unemployment rates in the region are

significantly higher for Roma than for majority communities – in some countries, twice

as high. Roma tend to be concentrated in low-skilled, low-quality forms of employment.

Discrimination often prevents Roma from finding adequate employment –

unemployment rates among non-Roma with similar skill-level are lower than for Roma.

Employment rates for Roma women are below 20%.

I live here in very poor conditions, worse than those in my home-country, but I have some facilities that I

have never dreamed. I earn a good amount of money so that I can send home to my family. Not to speak

of the fact that no one is judging me after the tone of my skin, which is an important thing for me. (B. P. 30

years, Northampton, UK)

For us , it is quite complicated here, as we are quite dark-skinned. A potential employer asks where we

leave and we say the area, and then, they immediately know we are Roma and they reject us. I am a

good painter, I know my job for 25 years, but, believe me, it is very difficult to find something. They prefer

Belgians, instead. (R.R. 45 years, Brussels, Belgium).

IX. Conclusions and recommendations

IX. 1. Conclusions

The aggressive toleration of Roma in Europe - manifested either through social exclusion or as

a pretext to turned them towards civilization is the same perpetual social eugenic politics,

beyond any temporal or intensity nuances.

Biopolitic policies for the social / ethnical health of nations, ethnocentrism and social domination

and exclusion of undesirables / ”dysgenics” - have maintained, institutions of contact population,

preserved a perpetual status of “Homo Sacer” for the Roma, having as consequences the Antigypsism.

This research has attempted to re-define an almost quasi-unknown and under-researched

human space, through a “discourse on method” approach. The initial premises are that the

continuous loss of “cultural capital” by the excluded group and the irrational/ unreasonable

exclusion / “deraison” promoted by bio-powers/bio-politics represent endogenous and

46

exogenous factors, relevant in measuring and combating the continuous degradation of the

Roma situation. Thus, I decided to propose specific recommendations that come as a adding to

the exiting ones, focusing on addressing all the social exclusion components.

These include: a) a strong feeling of marginalization and helplessness; b) a strong

feeling of dependence and inferiority and a lack of social personality; c) resignation and

fatalism; d) a cycle of poverty, continuously re-enhanced as children assume their

parents' values and attitudes, inheriting and reproducing the state of poverty, the

patterns involved in the culture of poverty.

In this view, I considered Roma social exclusion as a “lack of recognition of basic rights,

or where that recognition existed, lack of access to a political and legal system

necessary to make those rights a reality”.

The “critique” of the “culture of poverty” undertaken in this work stresses that an

irreversible damage to human existence is caused not as much by material deprivation

as by psychological/cultural deprivation and that racism is the cause of the permanent

exclusion of the Roma, as a continuing phenomenon. In addition, racial exclusion is the

cause of the disastrous situation of Roma in Europe and yet the formula “Roma – the

Black people of Europe” is pernicious, excluding Roma from the juridical rights reserved

for national minorities.

A World Bank report described the collapse of living conditions for the Roma as

unprecedented: “Roma are poorer than other groups, more likely to fall into poverty, and

more likely to remain poor. In some cases, Romani poverty rates are more than 10

times that of non-Roma.

It is widely accepted that reliable demographic and social statistics on the Roma are

nonexistent.96 This is evident also in the European Roma Rights Center compilation on

absolute numbers of Roma in European countries (see Annex 2).

96 European Roma Rights Center report, op.cit.

47

With minimal terminological adaptation the states perpetuate this ubiquity which results

in a huge discrepancy between the number of Roma – according to official censuses

and estimative number of Roma – from Police statistics, sociological studies or from

Roma themselves. In some cases, as in the case of Romania, the numbers are

estimated four times higher than the official number of Roma. Even the European

estimations of 8-10 millions Roma preserve this “vague” sense, even if the difference of

2 millions Roma exceeds the population of some European Union’s states.

However, in almost all existing reports it is mention that the Europe’s Romani population

is estimated at between 7 and 10 million97. The EU expansion in May 2004 added

approximately 1.5 million Roma to the EU population; the accession of Romania and

Bulgaria to the EU in 2007 will add another 3 million98.

Education

When it comes to education, all the discussions are focused on scholar education,

especially desegregation and improvement of Romani children attendance programmes

and policies. Little attention is given to the issue of combating stereotypes and

prejudices against Roma people, or promoting the Roma identity.

It is true that too many Romani children today are classified as “mentally handicapped”

and relegated to “special schools” and that too many other Romani children attend

substandard “Gypsy schools” situated in Romani ghettos. Although the countries

participating in the Decade of Roma Inclusion have endorsed its education goals, little

has been done yet. In order to raise the academic achievement of Romani children to

the same levels as those attained by their peers, full and equal access to schools is

97 European Commission, The Situation of Roma in an Enlarged European Union (2004), 9.

http://europa.eu.int/comm/employment_social/fundamental_rights/pdf/pubst/roma04_en.pdf

98 Bernard Rorke and Andre Wilkens, Roma Inclusion - Lessons Learned from OSI’s Roma Programming, Open Society

Institute, 2006

48

needed and also focusing on keeping Romani pupils in school until they complete

vocational training or receive high school diplomas.

Recommendations on Education

• Education initiatives are necessary and need to address the issue of

desegregation, discrimination and material disadvantage. It is important that

these programmes involve Romani parents and communities; to introduce

training for teachers and administrators for eliminating stereotypes and

prejudices against Roma; the development and use of culturally sensitive

curricula is impetuous necessary; and supplementary tutoring and scholarship

support to prepare for exams and complete secondary schooling.

• Schools need to hire more qualified Roma as teachers, and to upgrade the

professional status of Romani teaching assistants.

• Governments should produce action plans, with realistic deadlines for the

complete desegregation of their educational systems.

Discrimination and prejudices

The cultural “inclusion” of Roma could act as a catalyst of social revival, could invigorate

Roma community mobilization, and could assist the building of a more just society.

Cultural inclusion is a prerequisite for social inclusion.

Educational systems are an important instrument for achieving a more tolerant society

on a long-term basis, challenging negative images of Roma, and strengthening Roma

identity among future generations. An inclusive mainstream curriculum will destigmatise

Roma ethnic identity, produce a shift in the attitude of Roma towards their

future by increasing the mobilisation of Roma, and challenge society’s ignorance toward

the problems faced by Roma.

49

Recommendations on addressing discrimination and prejudices

• Creation of institutions and specific programmes to support Roma identity to

enable Roma scientists to conduct research on the Roma identity and to

communicate Romani identity to Roma and non-Roma alike is a must. This could

represent an important step for the deficit of cultural reproduction institutions,

redefine Roma ethnic identity and stimulate the mobilization of Roma.

• Governments, donors and policy making institutions should prioritize the issue of

discrimination and prejudices and should have an increase number of

programmes to address an inclusive mainstream curricula within the educational

systems, and promotion of emerging Roma role models as a way to increase

Roma self respect and change public attitudes.

• Challenging the negative images of Roma and enhancing Roma identity should

be a priority for a successful implementation and a real impact of all the public

policies that target the improvement Roma situation, including the Roma Decade

initiative.

• Enlarge the focus of Roma Education Fund on programmes that address early

marriages, support advocacy and media campaigns to make the mainstream

curricula inclusive within the educational systems in the countries with significant

Roma populations.

Support emerging Roma role models

In the last 15 years, new generations of Roma activists have emerged and recently

were imposed as Roma representatives within the Decade process. Old generation of

Roma experts and activists were left behind as policy for promoting young generation of

Roma.

50

Recommendations to support emerging Roma role models

• Successful Roma advocates should be promoted as role models for Roma and

non-Roma through its own communication channels.

• Projects and programmes should be designed in order to involve the old

generation of Roma experts, so that their expertise be used in a positive way.

Eliminating Discrimination through Raising Awareness

Verbal attacks on Roma, racist statements by public officials and politicians and anti-

Roma media campaigns are an actual problem in almost all the countries were Roma

live. Such discourse is not confined to the extreme right wing of the political spectrum,

and those persons who propagate it do so in an uninhibited fashion with seeming

impunity, ever confident that they are merely echoing their audience’s common-sense

perceptions.

According to a poll made in 2005 by Open Society Foundation, Romania, 75% of

Romanians would not like to have Roma as neighbours. The report underlines other

similar cases such as numerous racist affirmations made my Romanian media and

mention the case of Craiova Mayor who was fined twice by the National Council for

Combating Discrimination because he publicly expressed his racist opinions. Although

he was forced to quit from his political position as Vice- president of Social- Democrat

Party, he is still the mayor of Craiova County.

Recommendations on Eliminating Discrimination through Raising Awareness

• Political, business, and religious leaders; art and sport celebrities, government

and religious institutions, NGOs and other interested groups should undertake

and join high-profile, public-education, and antiracism campaigns to show the

damage that prejudice, segregation, discrimination, and violence are inflicting

upon the Roma — as well as upon the broader community.

51

• Presidents and prime ministers, party leaders, and other high ranking political

officials need to publicly and repeatedly speak out against racism, to make clear

that verbal attacks on the Roma are unacceptable, and that the Roma are full

and equal members of the political community.

• The EU should be sure that documenting and challenging discrimination against

racial and ethnic minorities and non-citizens remains a major area of focus for

the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC).

• Sustaining public and government support for Romani policies over a long period

requires changing public attitudes towards Roma. Awareness-raising initiatives

that highlight critical issues and policies, the contribution Roma make to society,

and the benefit a tolerant society brings to all should be a priority for all decisionmakers.

• The EU has a lot of experience regarding awareness-raising campaigns targeted

at eliminating racism and discrimination. The EU should make use of its

experience to design and implement a European communication strategy on

Roma.

Media reporting on Roma

Media play an important role in setting the agenda of politicians and institutions and it

represents a powerful tool in reproducing the prejudices towards Roma and stigmatising

Roma ethnic identity, as well. Supporting Roma news agencies producing reports from

the communities might be instrumental in changing the patterns of portraying Roma in

the mainstream media as well.

Recommendations on Media reporting on Roma

• A monitoring body focusing on anti-Gypsyism should be established. Despite

many reports proving the need for such a body, decision makers do still not take

the necessary action.

• This monitoring body should be at national level and should have the aim to

assess and monitor the initiatives, action plans or policies targeting Roma.

Facilitating a good working relation with the Roma NGOs should be a priority for

those bodies.

52

Social Health

Despite the small amount of data on the health status of Roma, one clear picture

emerges from the existing information: Roma have lower life expectancy than the

general population, and they are more susceptible to diseases and suffer higher rates of

infant mortality.

Recommendations on Health

• Public health, medical and nursing institutions need health training curricula that

include strategies to ensure equitable treatment, access, and opportunities for

members of vulnerable populations in general and the Roma in particular.

• More data on the health of Roma in Europe are necessary. Information is needed

to identify and profile the most vulnerable and at-risk groups among Romani

communities. It is necessary to disseminate information among Romani

communities to improve basic health literacy, to raise awareness of rights,

principles of informed consent, and access to health institutions and preventive

health care.

• Effective monitoring mechanisms are necessary to ensure that Roma are

receiving quality health services and to address issues of direct and indirect

discriminatory practices against Roma by health care professionals and

institutions.

• Sanctions and means of redress against doctors, nurses, and other health

professionals are necessary to counter discrimination and violations of patients’

rights.

Housing

Discriminatory housing policies of governments past and present have in large part

segregated and isolated Romani settlements. The poor living conditions in many of

these ghettos are well documented and, in many instances, they fall far short of World

Health Organization standards requiring, among other things, safe water supplies,

waste and rubbish disposal, drainage of standing surface water, and safeguards against

disease transmission.

53

Forced evictions, disputes over property rights and the legal status of settlements,

discrimination by the local authorities over access to social housing compound the

problems confronting the residents of many of these settlements.

Regarding the living conditions of Roma immigrants, the situation is worse, being

housed in camps without water supplies, waste and rubbish disposal, and drainage of

standing surface water.

86% of the people interviewed states that they are housed in poor conditions, being told

that the decision makers have provided the Roma with such camps housing, according

to the Roma culture and their tradition of being nomads. As a paradox, just 10% of the

interviewed Roma belonged to a traditional group that was still nomad.

More than that, the forced-eviction cases have been worryingly increasing in the

Eastern Europe for the last 5 years (see the case of Sofia, Belgrade, Bucharest,

February 2005 – July 2006), cases that cannot be resolved because there is not a legal

obligation from the part of authorities.

Recommendations on Housing

• National governments should press local authorities to meet their legal

obligations and make use of all available funding resources in order to improve

living conditions in Romani settlements and to identify the most expeditious and

effective means to legalize informal settlements.

• Romani settlements should be incorporated into urban plans and receive the

necessary public services to meet World Health Organization standards for

adequate housing.

• Housing policies should be tailored to specific local conditions. Local betterhousing

initiatives should include a variety of housing models, extensive

community consultation, especially with the Roma, and mechanisms to ensure

transparency, effective management, and monitoring of project implementation.

Camping sites models from Western Europe could be a model to be extended to

Central and Eastern Europe, this ensuring the access of homeless Roma or the

one without a domicile /“sans domicile fix” to different social assistance

programmes.

54

Employment

According to the OSI report99 Roma are one of the weakest groups in the labour market

and suffer levels of unemployment that reach 90 % in some isolated communities and

villages. Over the past 15 years, most Roma have been either unemployed or

underemployed. Unemployment is reinforced by a number of factors, including physical

isolation of Romani settlements and communities and a lack of jobs in areas where

many Roma live, factors inhibiting Roma from moving to more economically developed

areas; low educational levels, a general lack of technical skills, widespread

discrimination against Roma in hiring, widespread dependence upon state assistance,

and ineffective efforts to improve employment are other factors that led to this situation.

Recommendations on Employment

• Affirmative action is necessary to improve job opportunities for Roma. These

measures must be carefully designed, and their implementation must be carefully

monitored, to avoid creating distortions and artificial labour markets.

• Projects and programmes should be designed and implemented to target the

Romani-owned businesses. Micro-finance programs and economic- and

commercial- development agencies should change their mode of operation to be

more responsive and relevant for Romani entrepreneurs.

• Preventative and punitive measures are necessary to defeat job discrimination

against Roma. These measures should include training on labour discrimination

for government officials, employers, trade union officials, and employees; and

effective sanctions for abuses, whether they occur in the public or the private

sectors.

• Comprehensive legislation outlawing job discrimination is necessary, and must

be a matter of public knowledge. The laws against job discrimination should

comply with European Council directives and have provisions guaranteeing ease

of access and swift redress for victims.

99 Bernard Rorke and Andre Wilkens, op.cit.

55

Civil Society

According to Bernard Rorke and Andre Wilkens, over the past decade, the NGO sector

has proven to be the entry point for Romani participation in public life. It is largely due to

Romani civic activism that there is some public awareness or recognition of Romani

issues. In addition to their role as advocates of Romani rights, NGOs with strong ties to

local communities are the key to the success of any initiative or intervention targeting

Roma.

With the support of donors, especially OSI, a new generation of Roma activists has

been created and recently was imposed as Roma representatives within the Decade

process. As result, the old generation of Roma experts and activists were left behind,

creating a conflict between the two.

Recommendations on Civil Society

• The Romani NGO sector needs to be expanded and strengthened. Ad hoc,

project-based funding is not enough. Institutional core support and a more

strategic, long-term approach to funding are necessary to bolster capacity within

this sector.

• Intensive training to build individual and organizational capacity is necessary.

Training should extend beyond project and finance management to include

content-based policy training in the issues that impact most upon Romani

communities. Intensive training in advocacy skills and political leadership is

necessary to prepare new Romani leaders capable of holding public office and

moving from civic activism to political representation.

• Involvement of the old generation of Roma experts and usage of their knowledge

should be envisaged in the developing process and straitening the civil society.

Personal Documents

According to the European Roma Rights Center, an international public interest law

organization that monitors the situation of Roma in Europe, vast numbers of Roma

suffer a lack of personal documents, including birth certificates, identity cards, residence

permits, passports, and documents proving eligibility for state-provided social welfare

and health insurance. This confines Roma to a Kafkaesque nightmare in which the lack

56

of one document, for example an identity card, makes it impossible to acquire another

one such as a document for health insurance benefits, for voter registration, for

residency registration, for school enrolment or legal employment, or for receiving social

benefits.

Roma immigrants are the most vulnerable group and the most affected of the lack of

documents.

Recommendations on the Lack of Personal Documents

• Political leaders should launch targeted initiatives to expedite the issuance of

basic documents to the Roma who lack them, both at the national and local

levels,.

Migration

The issue of Roma migration must be better integrated into poverty reduction policy and

practice and needs to be addressed. Those involved in international development

should understand Roma migration issues and the implications that these issues have

for developing country policy and development more generally.

This understanding should be reflected in country and regional planning documents and

programmes. Development efforts should also include support to partner governments

to develop national legislation and the institutional capacity to manage the flow of

migrants for the benefit of poor men and women, national economies and social and

political improvement.

The characteristics of migration are very context specific and whilst the potential impact

of human mobility on poverty reduction is significant, it is not yet possible to draw

definitive conclusions. To do this the evidence base in developing countries needs to be

strengthened through the implementation of programmes that address the range of

migration issues.

57

Recommendations on the Migration

• Government should recognize the migration phenomenon as a surviving

technique and as an income generator and should answer specifically to the

problem. Specific programmes and projects should be designed for this issue.

• It is important that policy and activity on Roma should take into account migration

and the factors in both the sending and receiving countries that lead to this

phenomenon.

• Governments, donors, international agencies and non-governmental

organisations need to work on the most effective way of taking forward work on

Roma migration and development.

• Governments and other decision makers should find opportunities for seasonal

work for Roma, which could lead to a decrease of illegal immigration.

Recommendations for the Roma Decade

• Governments should adopt coherent policies for Roma inclusion. Taking into

account that just 6 states recognize Roma as national / ethnic minority of their

countries and hence limiting Roma to benefit from all the rights the national/

ethnic minorities are benefiting from, more countries with significant number of

Roma population should do the necessary steps to recognize them as national/

ethnic minority.

• Support to make the Decade a success, by enforcing the crosscutting objectivesdiscrimination,

gender and media and addressing all the component of poverty

and social exclusion are needed.

• Increased capacity of Roma to act effectively for themselves, in all possible areas

of public life is another major issue that should be addressed.