Race, migration and neoliberalism: distorted notions of Romani migration in European public discourses

Abstract

This article analyzes the migration of Roma based on recent public, academic, policy and political debates in connection with two specific case studies in France and Italy. Moreover, it aims to understand how contemporary racialized discourses and neoliberal social and political forces (re)create Roma as a racialized internal 'other' to legitimize subtle anti-Romani politics in Europe. By doing that, it argues that the current migration of Roma cannot be understood apart from the proliferation of the hegemonic neoliberal ideology that facilitates the racialization of Roma and normalizes their social exclusion in Europe. Moreover, it explores the role of neoliberalism in the racialization and subjugation of Roma in Europe.

Un/Free mobility: Roma migrants in the European Union

“…Dominant representations have produced 'the Roma' as an isolated and reified 'object of study', whereby Roma people (as reified minoritised 'communities') appear to be self-contained, hermetically sealed, and so radically different from everyone else that it becomes virtually impossible to recognise them as participants within wider social formations of migration or migrant networks, racialised 'minority' social formations, class formations of labour or precarity, urban neighbourhoods or trans-local socio-spatial formations, or any other modes of meaningful social belonging (Durst, 2010;Kaneva & Popescu, 2014;Ladányi & Szelényi, 2001;Simhandl, 2006). Roma seem to be always exquisitely alone, irreducibly separate and distinct, and by implication, their sociopolitical marginalisation comes to appear as the inevitable effect of their own intrinsic ('ethnic') singularity, if not their putative ('cultural') 'incorrigibility' (Fekete, 2014;van Baar, 2012; see also Kóczé, 2017;Solimene, 2017). Hence, the fetishisation of Roma 'difference' seems as intractable as ever (Pusca, 2010(Pusca, , 2016.…”

“…Through the criminalising and securitising lens (Nacu, 2012;Project on Ethnic Relations, 1999;Simoni, 2011;van Baar, 2014) of welfare protectionism and ghettoisation (Picker, Greenfields, & Smith, 2015;van Baar, 2012; see also Humphris, 2017;Vrăbiescu & Kalir, 2017), however, 'free movement' is configured as a distinctly neoliberal project (see Kóczé, 2017;van Baar, 2017). Following an initial three-month period of unregulated residence, mobile EU citizens are subject to the following conditions: (1) Registration with the relevant (nation-state) authorities; and (2) Whereas those who are formally employed or self-employed are not required to meet any other conditions, individuals not continuously working for wages or a regular salary, (including students and retirees) 'must have sufficient resources for themselves and their family, so as not to be a burden on the host country's social assistance system, and comprehensive sickness insurance cover' (EUR-lex, 2015).…”

Kényszerű mobilitás: migrációs utak hátrányos helyzetű vidéki terekben

“…Ehelyett egy jóval inkább kritikai kutatási irány látszik kibontakozni, amely a mobilitási pályák elemzése helyett/mellett azoknak a mobilitási rezsimeknek az elemzésbe való beemelését hangsúlyozza, amelyek kondicionálják, korlá-tozzák és különböző nemzetbiztonsági politikákra hivatkozva, nemkívánatossá teszik a (prekárius) romák térbeli mozgását (Yildiz-De Genova 2017, van Baar 2017, Kóczé 2017. A főleg terepmunka módszerével tájékozódó kutatások másik fő jellemzője, hogy úgy vélik, a migráció fogalmát újra kell gondolni a mobilitás nyelvezetén keresztül (Glick-Schiller-Salazar 2013, Kalir 2013, Acuna 2016, Nagy 2016, Ciasci 2017, McNevin 2014.…”

Contained mobility and the racialization of poverty in Europe: the Roma at the development–security nexus

“…Since the collapse of state socialism, and largely due to these racializing processes of irregularization, we have seen increased and radical efforts to control and steer the ability of both poor domestic Roma and Romani migrants to circulate at local, regional, national and transnational levels in Europe (see also Kóczé, 2017). Processes of irregularization have become an integral part of the current movement to legitimize treating Roma differently to other EU citizens; to relegate them to substandard, segregated or provisional housing, education, health care and, in the most extreme, increasingly normalized cases, to evict them from their houses or sites and expel them from countries (van Baar, 2011b(van Baar, , 2015a.…”