Rethinking Roma: Identities, Politicisation and New Agendas

238 Pages·2018·1.778 MB·English

by  Ian Law, Martin Kovats (auth.)

RETHINKING ROMA
IDENTITIES, POLITICISATION
AND NEW AGENDAS
IAN LAW AND MARTIN KOVATS
MAPPING GLOBAL RACISMS
Mapping Global Racisms
Series editor
Ian Law
University of Leeds
Leeds, UK
There is no systematic coverage of the racialisation of the planet. This
series is the first attempt to present a comprehensive mapping of global
racisms, providing a way in which to understand global racialisation and
acknowledge the multiple generations of different racial logics across
regimes and regions. Unique in its intellectual agenda and innovative in
producing a new empirically-based theoretical framework for under-
standing this glocalised phenomenon, Mapping Global Racisms consid-
ers racism in many underexplored regions such as Russia, Arab racisms in
North African and Middle Eastern contexts, and racism in Pacific con-
tries such as Japan, Hawaii, Fiji and Samoa.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14813
Ian Law • Martin Kovats
Rethinking Roma
Identities, Politicisation and New
Agendas
Ian Law Martin Kovats
University of Leeds Budapest University of Economic Sciences
Leeds, UK and Public Administration
Budapest, Hungary
Mapping Global Racisms
ISBN 978-1-137-38581-9 ISBN 978-1-137-38582-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-38582-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017962516
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Acknowledgements
This book has been a long time in the writing. I began my doctoral thesis
in 1995 on the emergence of Roma politics in Hungary with the gener-
ous support of the University of Portsmouth, the Harold Hyam Wingate
Foundation and the British Association of Slavonic and East European
Studies. I continued my research with a postdoctoral grant from the
Economic and Social Research Council and further fellowships at the
University of Birmingham and at Corvinus University, Budapest. From
2010 I had the privilege to work as a Special Advisor to László Andor, the
EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion during
the period when the EU launched its Roma integration framework. For
the last three years I have sought to practically apply what I have learned
to managing a Gypsy & Travellers service for a UK local authority.
Over the last 25 years I have benefitted from the advice and insights of
numerous scholars, activists and officials to whom I am sincerely grateful.
In particular I would like to thank Professor Thomas Acton, Dr Will
Guy, Dr Nidhi Trehan, Attila Balogh, Aladár Horváth, the late Nicolae
Gheorghe, Christian Petry, Deyan Kolev, Valeriu Nicolae, Professor
Yaron Matras, Dr Elena Marushiakova, Veselin Popov, Eva Sobotka and
Paul Langford. Most of all, I would like to thank Andrea and Max for
their uncomplaining love and support.
Martin Kovats
v
vi Acknowledgements
It has been a great pleasure to work with Martin on this project and he
must take the main credit for this work. My work on theory and evidence
on Roma, Gypsy and Traveller communities really began with my 2010
book, which sought to place these debates at the centre of racism and
ethnicity studies, and which went on to explore these issues in schooling
in the UK (2011), in post-communist contexts (2012, 2017) and in the
Mediterranean region (2014). I have many people to thank over the years
who have assisted me in researching these topics and who have all been
previously acknowledged. Here I just wish to personally thank Martin for
the opportunity to participate in this new project.
Ian Law
Contents
1 The Rise of Roma Politics in Contemporary Europe 1
2 Roma Identity and Diversity 21
3 The Gypsy Legacy and Roma Politics 65
4 Roma Activism 97
5 Roma Policy 137
6 Deracialisation 167
References 191
Index 213
vii
Introduction
In recent times a new word has entered the political lexicon across Europe
and beyond—Roma. When the first World Romany Congress met in the
London suburb of Orpington in 1971, it would have been hard to
encounter the public use of the word outside of a small number of aca-
demics and activists. Since the late 1980s, the situation of Roma has risen
up national and international political agendas, producing thousands of
political initiatives costing hundreds of millions of euros. At the same
time, Roma has been transformed into a dynamic political identity cham-
pioned by hundreds of organisations, thousands of activists and applied
to millions of people throughout Europe and beyond.
Economic, social, political and other changes since the Second World
War have increased the political saliency of domestic Roma populations.
This is most vividly the case in the dramatic impoverishment of large
Roma minorities in Eastern Europe following the collapse of Communism,
but also expressed in greater public attention given to communities in
Western Europe. The politics of Roma has been influenced by migration
from east to west, which has encouraged the intervention of transnational
political institutions. At the same time, the capacity of Roma people
themselves, that is, the subjects of the public discourse about Roma, to
participate in public life has increased. Greater numbers, higher educa-
tion, material and institutional support and other factors mean that
Roma can no longer be excluded from the state and society, but have
ix
x Introduction
acquired (greater and growing) agency to engage in public affairs. The
degree to which this agency can be expressed reflects a fundamental break
with the past, creating much more dynamic relationships between Roma
and political authorities than has traditionally been the case.
The political significance of Roma today reflects both pragmatic and
ideological needs—to discuss and address objective issues, for example,
unemployment, poor housing, discrimination and so on requiring gov-
ernmental attention, and choosing to do so through a specific, ethnic
discourse, which has become discursively and institutionally integrated
under the category label Roma. This process is far from complete and
there remain many alternative, but associated, identities, yet Roma has
become by far the most widely used public identity applied to particular
communities throughout Europe.
The evolution of the politics of Roma reached a new stage in 2011
with the adoption of the EU Framework for National Roma Integration
Strategies. The Framework brings together specific Roma policy actions
from across Europe in a single institutional process and encourages
Member States to adopt further Roma-specific measures. Though the
objects of policy (the Roma) are vaguely defined and some key countries
refuse to use the term for policy purposes, the Framework and associated
discourse emphasise and promote Roma as a distinct, collective political
identity. In effect, a political community has been defined and institu-
tionalised bringing together highly diverse and diffuse minority popula-
tions through political initiatives linked by the Framework.
Addressing Roma politics as distinct phenomenon touches directly on
the question—to whom and/or what does Roma refer? At face value it is
the politics of a particular group of people called Roma, though it is well
recognised among specialists in the field that the Roma people of the
European Framework and other institutional documents denote a
notional population rather than one defined by sharing a unique or
exclusive defining cultural or other characteristic. The integration of the
narrative of the Roma people into wider debates about historical and
contemporary exclusion arising from ethnoracial difference allows Roma
politics to be understood as reflecting both the empowerment of the
Roma and the recognition of their needs by public authorities.
Ideologically and systemically, this is the Time of the Gypsies and now