Social Mobilities in the Transnational Migration of Romanian Roma to Italy

Abstract

The article can be included in the contemporary debate about the role that transnational migrations play in modifying the European social order. There is general agreement about the fact that, in the modern-day global framework, while transnational migration can improve the living conditions of some, they can also make things worse for others and can contribute to creating new forms of inequality rather than curtailing old ones. Scholars agree that international migration can lead to profound social changes through social remittances or cultural mobilities, but they are skeptical about the possibility of considerable re-stratification both in receiving and origin countries.
 The article therefore investigates changes in status within some Romanian Roma migrant networks in Italy based on a set of qualitative and ethnographic data compiled during the European project The Immigration of Romanian Roma to Western Europe: Causes, Effects and Future Engagement Strategies – MigRom.
 This article demonstrates how Romanian Roma migration is only able to produce status changes in migration partially, and highlights how these changes are the result of a diverse combination of factors, such as Roma migrants' motivation, ambition, and opportunities, but above all migration policies and anti-Gypsyism in the origin and receiving countries.

Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fire?

“…However, as the ethnographic cases in this paper demonstrate, the chances of getting ahead through transnational movement are conditioned by many intersecting factors. In the case of my interlocutors, the most important ones are the: 1) different regimes of mobility politics (Glick- Schiller and Salazar, 2013), along with the non/presence of anti-Gypsyism in the destination societies (Pontrandolfo, 2018); 2) the demand and structure of the localised global labour market 3) and the original social positions, attitude and social capital, migrants bring with them to their new localities. The analysis of the empirical material, divided in three sections, serves to illustrate the working of these factors.…”