CER | Travelers on Separate and Unequal Paths

The way Europe treats its Roma is a fundamental indicator of the sort of democracy Europe wants. Virtually ubiquitous throughout Europe, Roma (and Gypsies, Travelers, Sinti, Vlachs …) form a constitutive part of the European polity. Nicolae Gheorghe and Thomas Acton, in a wonderful account in this book of the “Roma archipelago,” remind us of the particular Europe represented by this transnational group who span most European countries and speak most European languages. Often living in uneasy economic symbiosis with their fellow Europeans, usually on the margins of their societies, Roma have long played the indispensable foil to Europe’s modernization.

As Europe has consolidated its borders and property regimes, Roma/Gypsy peoples and cultures have often appeared as the symbol par excellence of what has been lost or rejected along the way--and what has survived. Their difference from their neighbors has been relentlessly squeezed--forcibly settled under communist assimilation policies in the East, they were barred from numerous public and private spaces in the West. How many Europeans, Eastern or Western, have grown up without the familiar counter-example of the real or mythical Gypsy family somewhere nearby? As a child in 1970s Tipperary, I remember the “tinker” kids in school who teachers and pupils alike habitually ignored or insulted until eventually they no longer turned up. How familiar, learning Hungarian in Budapest 20 years later, to hear the same invective on the bus, in the post office, in the open markets of this country on the far side of Europe.

Today, the deprived--often despised--status of Roma in Europe is symptomatic of a fundamental failure in the construction of the liberal-egalitarian society so prized by Europeans that they inserted a definition of it into the Treaty on European Union: “liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.” As Europe pursued anti-racism policies in the late 20th century, it often seemed as though different rules applied for the Roma. Not even the exemplary Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has seen fit to rule otherwise. It was only with the fall of communism, when it was realized that 5 million or so Roma would accompany their Eastern compatriots on the long “transition” Westward, that the needs of these Europeans entered the political arena.

Why, then, after 12 post-communist years of research, policy-making, and funding in Central and Eastern Europe, have ordinary Roma seen so few tangible benefits? This fine volume goes some way toward giving an answer. The articles, by an assortment of academics, activists and policy actors, both Roma and non-Roma (gadje), cover an apparently eclectic range of subjects--Hungarian communist ethnicity policy, a taxonomy of “Roma” languages and ethnic groups, the proceedings of the fifth World Romani Congress, to name a few. But certain themes recur: the diversity of Romani peoples, cultures, and experiences on the one hand, and the relative inattention paid to that diversity by policy-makers, both national and international, on the other.

The papers are concerned particularly with post-communist policy affecting Roma in Central and Eastern Europe: a largely sociological reading of the impact of policy. In his introductory overview, Will Guy makes a strong case--drawing on a landmark 1997 study by Nicolae Gheorghe and Andrzej Mirga--for structural differences in the histories of Roma/Gypsies in Eastern and Western Europe, as the two halves of the continent pursued profoundly different routes toward the stated goal of equality. To the East, he argues, economic integration of these outsiders was paramount, with the result that an “ethnic” policy model gave way to a “social” model, focused on their settlement and employment.

Such models originally created a groundswell of political capital in promoting the equality of Roma following the revelation of the horrors of the Roma Holocaust during World War II. Nevertheless, Michael Stewart argues in a stimulating overview of Hungarian postwar initiatives, these policies were “cynical and manipulative. Whenever something of import was at stake … the Gypsies were simply forgotten.” Communist policy, although egalitarian, was ad hoc, coercive and nonconsultative. Guy reminds us of the Czech Charter 77 prediction that, following the end of communism, the ethnic identity and economic instability of the Roma would snap back at Central European societies--something that has since happened.

Today’s trans-European policies appear to wrap economic (or populist) objectives in the language of cultural and human rights protection. They also restore “ethnicity” to center stage, although the term is still poorly understood. The ethnic banner recalls emancipatory movements of the past, notably the Civil Rights movement that galvanized the opponents of legal and social barriers for American blacks. It has immense appeal to politically active Roma, providing a rallying cry for a transnational diaspora of Roma everywhere--and a buzzword for international lobbying. The ethnic framework also suits an emerging European policy as a basis for (poorly defined) minority standards that can be applied across national barriers as part of broader strategic goals.

But, as this collection makes clear, the cultural/ethnic approach has its drawbacks too. It elides much of the real culture and experience of peoples scattered throughout Europe. Many Gypsies, Travelers, and Sinti simply do not accept the “Roma” umbrella. Likewise, it can encourage a one-size-fits-all policy approach, often at odds with the circumstances of many individual communities. “Culture” can be suspect, we are reminded; invoked to excuse the status quo, or to mask heterogeneity and legitimize sweeping policies.

In part the return to a cultural/ethnic approach marks a success for the increasingly important international Roma lobby. As Gheorghe and Acton note, given the shape of European Roma demographics, “even those who call themselves Roma nationalists had no choice but to organize transnationally.” In this Roma activists were aided by a mushrooming complex of nongovernmental organizations and private foundations in Central Europe, which saw in the “Roma issue” a mobilizing force for civil society and human rights. At the same time, European international bodies, especially the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe, began to pay attention. A Roma international elite now exists, but, as with any nascent political movement (particularly one so dependent on external resources), the road to constructing a viable international lobby has not been easy--as the exhaustive account given here of the 2000 World Romani Congress in Prague makes clear.

Roma politics do not yet drive Roma policy. And it is clear from this collection that national and transnational policies will continue to have limited impact as long as the “democratic deficits” between policy-shapers and their targets--as well as within the Roma movement itself--are not addressed or, in the latter case, superceded.

Much disagreement remains within the murky world of Roma politics today: over whether there is in fact a “Roma nation”--and if so, how it should organize. Over the appropriateness of a policy focus on racial discrimination above pressing socioeconomic concerns. And over the high level of involvement of gadje within “the Roma industry.” The contributors to this volume are anything but unanimous on these questions. But all agree that policy to date has been insufficient to the immense problems faced by Roma peoples, that discrimination against Roma remains real and widespread, and that today is a rich moment of flux for those willing or able to seize it.

Almost inevitably, given the parallel perspective on a “single Europe” shared by Romani activists and European Commission technocrats, EU enlargement policy toward Roma gets a mention in almost every article in the collection. By casting a spotlight on widespread conditions of deprivation and discrimination--and making funds available to treat them--the EU has exercised its considerable political leverage to drive the Roma issue up national agendas in Central Europe. However, EU Roma policy focuses only on accession candidate countries, and thus makes itself vulnerable to charges that it reflects a double standard by demanding measures in the East not applicable in the West. It has long been clear that discrimination will not vanish in time for accession. What level of exclusion is acceptable?

Defenses can be made on the commission’s behalf. EU policy is not entirely blind to local circumstances, as this book sometimes implies. In Romania, for example, persistent engagement by the local commission delegation has resulted in an allocation of funding toward a series of projects approved in sustained consultation with Romanian Roma groups. Then too, the commission is forced to attend to often parochial demands from member states, over which it has little leverage. State policy toward immigration and asylum, for example, exposes deep European doublethink. The particularly aggressive immigration policy evident in a number of West European countries--directed against individuals, most of them Roma, who are soon to be encompassed within the same European space--gives the lie to the precarious distinction between citizens and aliens upon which the entire structure rests. Roma are, in the words of one of the contributors to this book, “the Achilles heel” of European immigration policy.

Martin Kovats is perceptive in pointing out the danger for the EU of advancing an unpopular Roma agenda within the framework of the accession process, particularly when Roma do not obviously benefit themselves. In already stretched economic circumstances, citizens may feel that Roma are favored at their expense; social tensions may grow and even be exploited by unscrupulous politicians. Increased antipathy may be directed at Roma while the EU is equally denounced as a threat to national sovereignty. The EU must be cognizant of these difficulties in developing policy, Kovats notes: “Europe needs to overcome the widespread view that Roma represent a domestic political problem and to win the support of elites and society by making a Roma minority an asset to a country. … The key to the success of the inevitable and deepening European institutional engagement … is to provide sufficient inducements to encourage domestic elites and public opinion to accept the variety of changes necessary to ensure equality of opportunity.

“The Roma question has been confounding policy-makers for centuries,” Kovats concludes. “European institutions have a truly historic role to play in finally overcoming one of the bleaker aspects of European history. It would be more than a shame for them to fail to rise to the challenge.” They could do worse than read this book, where they would be reminded that the challenge is still the fulfillment of Europe’s promise of a truly democratic society.

This remarkable collection begins by outlining “a set of social problems so complex and contradictory as to defy any foreseeable prospect of solution.” The editor can be applauded for shirking neither the complexity nor the contradictions. The variety of opinions on offer here might have been a drawback. Instead it is an advantage: The collection signals the multiplicity of experience and opinion that is itself the backbone of the growing European Roma movement. For this reviewer, the editor could have been more ruthless, particularly in the third section on specific countries. Overall, the volume fails to give the legal dimension of Romani issues sufficient space, a serious deficit given that, in this sphere as elsewhere, it is through the law that policy will function or not. That said, the volume impressively summarizes, and supplements, the burgeoning scholarship on Europe’s Roma minority; “essential,” as prominent Romani scholar and activist Ian Hancock justly states in the foreword, “to any serious Romani library.”

Stephen Humphreys is the coordinator and editor of EUMap, the website of the EU Accession Monitoring Program.

This review first appeared in Transitions Online.

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