The Plight of Eastern Europe’s Roma

Abstract

Background: the historical and intellectual development of the study of the Roma in Central and Eastern EuropeHow the Roma historically emerged as a topic of academic study The Roma, a population group that includes many of Central and Eastern Europe's most socio-economically vulnerable citizens (see EU Agency for Fundamental Rights 2012: 80-81, OSCE 2013, World Bank 2013, are not a new topic of study in the social sciences. For a long time, however, the plight of the region's Roma populations did not receive much attention from either politicians or academicians. In anthropology, for example, the Roma were often the subject of amateurish folklore (Stewart 2013), a fact that may have been related to the particular image attached to them -they were depicted as 'social outcasts and scapegoats, or, in a flattering but far from illuminating light, as romantic outsiders' in many accounts (Lucassen, Willems and Cottaar 1998: 1). In the 1970s and 1980s more sophisticated anthropological and sociological accounts of Romani communities (Acton 1979, Okely 1983, Puxon 1977, Ulč 1988 increased the profile of what came later to be known as 'Romani studies', which is now a broad interdisciplinary field attracting attention from scholars from a variety of specialisations from across the social sciences and the humanities (Acton 2000, Guy 2001, Matras 2012. Current research efforts include not only small-scale ethnographic investigations but also large-scale studies focusing on the socio-economic position of the Roma, which highlight, for example, issues of employment (e.g. Kertesi and Kézdi 2011), housing and residential segregation (e.g.

Differing Romani Mobilities? The Case of Cross-Border Migration of Roma Between Slovenia and Austria

“…I presented excerpts of Romani individuals' life stories who found themselves in such a position. The aim of this chapter was not to present certain trends in what is usually considered as "Romani migration", but rather to show, as Peter Vermeersch (2018) stated, that the notion of Romani migration becomes problematic, once alternative narratives on why and how Romani individuals migrate are presented. While it is impossible to draw any general conclusions based on these qualitative approaches, generalisations based on numbers of Roma and of Roma migrants living in each EU Member State are also very questionable, since these numbers are usually only estimates.…”

“…After the fall of the Berlin Wall and in the discussions that occurred on EU accession for the former socialist countries with high Romani populations (especially Bulgaria and Romania), the public discourse perpetuated the fear that Roma would move en masse towards "old" EU Member States (Guglielmo and Waters 2005;Sardelić 2018). This fear was not only based on that of mass migration, but also on a perception that Romani migration is particularly unwanted (Yuval Davis et al 2017;Richardson 2014;Martin et al 2017;Vermeersch 2013).…”

Horizontal Redistribution and Roma Inclusion in the Western Balkans: The “Exclusion Amid Inclusion” Dilemma

“…What are the main trends in current research on policies to promote Roma inclusion that involve horizontal redistribution? A large part of the literature on Roma focuses on problems rather than solutions: It describes and examines the social processes that push Roma into positions of exclusion (e.g., Van Baar, 2012;Vermeersch, 2017b). Another important body of literature examines the tensions inherent in policy-making efforts to promote Roma inclusion.…”

Artistic memory and Roma women’s history through an intersectional lens: The Giuvlipen Theater

“… 11. The essentialist interpretations of Romani culture can be found in stereotypical writings about Roma and refer to those views contending that the Roma are ‘a historically unchanged and un-adapted group whose members willfully refuse the norms and values of society at large’ (see Vermeersch, 2017: 6). …”