Victoria KingDr. Lovern – AWR5p. Paper #211 November 2010

Tales of the Romani: Further Discrimination in Modern Europe

The Romani are an ethnic group of people who more often have been designated as

“gypsies”. They are most known for their nomadic lifestyles, travelling about in caravans,

selling wares and providing entertainment for profit, such as fortune telling, putting on plays, and

telling stories. Unfortunately, they have a notorious reputation for being child-thieves,

performing evil sorcery, stealing in general, con-artistry, among other negative conceptions.

These are the sorts of conceptions the Roma face that have not helped their circumstances in the

least; in fact, the Roma have been undergoing intense social and political discrimination for quite

some time now. In my last paper on this subject, I touched up on a brief outline of the history of

slavery and persecution that the Romani have faced. That paper mainly explained the

discrimination that the Romani people of Germany and Hungary were subjected to during the

Holocaust.

In this paper, I aim to focus mainly on what sort of discrimination the Roma have

continued to face much more recently in Europe. More exactly, I aim to document here what I

have researched concerning the forced expulsions of the Roma in France and their being sent to

Romania. This paper will include some of the possible causes of their expulsion from a political

standpoint; it will also consider some of the historical aspects of the experiences that the Romani

have had with trying to live in France, why they moved there in the first place, and how they are

faring in Romania and Bulgaria so far now that they have been sent to those locations.

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The Roma dispersed, very possibly from India and from Egypt, somewhere between 300

B.C.E. to 300 C.E. (De Soto, xxi). After having traveled and spread throughout Europe, some

are noted to have moved into Italy and France around 1420 (Achim, 12). Although the Roma in

France have recently been forcefully deported to Romania, Romania is not actually their home

country. In fact, by this point they do not actually even have a definite home country, although

the Roma population count is probably the highest in Romania, estimated at around 1,010,000 to

2.5 million (Greenberg, 927).

Romania was added to the European Union in 2007 (6, Ivereigh). When this occurred

along with the addition of other Eastern European countries to the European Union, Roma

people were allowed to legally migrate to wealthier countries without visas, paving a new path

toward better opportunities available to the Roma (“America”, 4). The European Union has

passed laws forbidding segregation and has donated money to work toward desegregating the

schools such that the Romani students can be more integrated into regular schools with the rest

of the children of varying backgrounds. Still, the Roma have continued to witness segregation in

European schools and housing, often with Roma students being sent to schools for special

education, or schools that are intended for slower learners or mentally disabled individuals. A

contributing problem is that, while the law has been passed in the European Union to forbid

segregation, “no European or national judicial or administrative organ has ordered the cessation

of segregation in any school, nor have they addressed the principal means of evasion, white

flight…. They have left corrective action to uncoordinated, unconstrained municipalities,” (919-

20, Greenberg). Also, when Eastern European nations were admitted into the European Union in

2000, they “pledged to eliminate racial discrimination, including widespread segregation of

Roma (Gypsy) school children (921, Greenberg).

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Nicolas Sarkozy, the current leader of France, has attracted “sharp criticism from human

rights groups, the European Union and the Vatican” (“America”, 4). The reason for this is

because he decided to expel the Roma from France rather than promote their integration, as

Spain has been exemplifying by investing toward education of Roma children and helping to

provide access to public housing and financial aid (4). I mentioned Spain as an example so that it

can be shown that it is possible to ameliorate the unfavorable conditions most Roma face today.

Not only has Sarkozy been attracting such criticism from these groups, but also from the French

citizens themselves. When Sarkozy was elected, he agreed to try to promote more ethnic

minorities; however, I think that this is a contradiction in terms with what he has actually done

by expelling the Roma, who are the largest and oldest minority ethnic group in Europe (1,

“Economist”, 14). Just in this year, France has deported around 8,000 Romani to Romania and

Bulgaria (2, “Economist”, 14).

One of the possible reasons that Sarkozy is doing this is to try to gain more favorable

recognition from the French masses in order to be re-elected in the upcoming election in 2012.

According to the Economist, “the policy [of Roma deportation] is generally popular among

voters”, (2, “Economist”, 14). I think the reason he has done this is because it is essentially

popular among potential voters to deport the Roma and, in doing so, he was able to eliminate

some of the poverty in France. This would be beneficial to help him in diminishing

unemployment rates as well as providing a sort of short-cut to help balance the budget, which

seems to be one of his greatest aims. He also promises to curb the deficit in France from 8% to

6% in a year; one of the ways he has proposed to do this is by lifting the retirement age from 60-

62. Although the media has shown the outrage and strikes of many French citizens concerning

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this decree, it seems to be the case that over half of the populace considered it to be an acceptable

act (1, “Economist”, 14).

Now that we have covered the issue of the Roma in France, I think it important to cover

how the Romani are treated in Romania and Bulgaria, the two locations in which they have been

specifically deported to from France. In both of the Eastern European countries, there is still

much bias toward the Romani people. Even though the European Union is considering methods

by which to integrate the Roma, the vast populace of citizens in Bulgaria and Romania seem to

consider this an undesirable proposition to carry out. “In Bulgaria, a state TV poll…showed that

71 percent of the viewers disapproved of the setting up of government programmes for Roma

integration and 45 percent approved the Roma expulsions from France…. More than 45

percent…said there should be separate schools for Roma children,” (Alexe, and Zhelev).

Racism and overt discrimination persists in Romania. One unsurprising example of this

is a remark which was made by the Romanian President himself, Traian Basescu. Basescu said

that, “There is a problem that makes it difficult to integrate the nomad Roma: very few of them

are willing to work and many of them live traditionally on what they steal,” (“Expatica”). The

same site says that a coalition of rights groups held that this sort of comment is nothing unusual

“in the stigmatization of the Roma by top Romanian officials,” and that, “this type of message…

reinforces the generalized hatred and the stereotypes against this minority,” (“Expatica”).

Besides the overt discrimination they witness, the physical living conditions of the Roma in

Romania are inadequate, to put it nicely. “Unemployment rates are close to 100% in some

places,” (Thorpe). In another article I read, a woman explained that the summers are unbearable

in the shelters they provide, and that if not for opening the roof window, they would literally

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cook. Not only that, the winters are brutal. It gets to -25 °C and the water in buckets drawn

actually freezes; she said that they even burn their clothes to keep from freezing (Filippou).

The general consensus seems to be that integration of the Romani should be better

enforced and encouraged. One of the most common concerns, aside from healthcare, housing,

and employment, is that the Romani children should be provided better opportunity to receive

formal education. Only one percent of Roma are estimated to have a college education

(Greenberg, 930). Very few Romani individuals are literate, and of the Roma that are able to

attend school, the poor living and health conditions that they face do not allow them sufficient

conditions in which to study effectively. Seventy to eighty percent of the entire Romani

population has not even completed primary school (Greenberg, 933).

On the upside, in the past year the Roma have gained a lot of media coverage and thus

wider recognition of the problem has been raised to outsiders. George Soros contributed 115

million Euros through his Open Society Foundations meant to go specifically toward improving

living conditions and opportunities of the Roma (McLaughlin). According to the same source,

“Romanian labor minister Mihai Seitan said his government had agreed with France to seek

more EU funds to help Gypsies integrate in their home countries,” (McLaughlin). The European

Union has contributed seventeen million Euros; the European social fund offered thirteen billion,

so it is not the case that there is a lack of funds (Pavey). It seems that it is more the case that

wise implementation of the funds is lacking; the funds somehow fail to reach the Roma

community (Pavey).

All in all I think that it is horrible what the Roma are going through now, even though it

is still not so different from what the Romani people have been subjected to for centuries to date.

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It is fortunate that the media coverage seems to be strong, with many people around the world

disdaining the mistreatment of the Romani, particularly concerning the choice of the president in

France, who seemingly has only done this in order to win votes from the right-wing voters in his

country. A wiser usage in the allocation of the donations provided to promote desegregation of

the Roma in general would help out substantially. With that, I shall end this paper with the same

idea as I did the last: they are being sent to shanty houses and ghetto towns in eastern Romania,

and the outlook is fairly bleak at the moment (Murray, 1).

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Works Cited

Achim, Viorel. Roma in Romanian History. Budapest, Hungary:

Central European University Press, 2004. Print.

Alexe, Dan, and Vesselin Zhelev.

"Roma in Romania and Bulgaria: Despised and Stigmatised."

Sophia News Agency. BG, 30 Sep 2010. Web. 14 Nov 2010.

<http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=120646>.

De Soto, Hermine.

Roma and Egyptians in Albania: From Social Exclusion to Social Inclusion.

Washington, D.C.: World Bank Publications, 2005. xxi-. Print.

"Deporting Roma People." America. 11 Oct 2010: 4. Print.

Filippou, Fotis. "Roma Community in Romania still Treated like Waste Six Years on."

Amnesty International. Amnesty International, 18 Oct 2010. Web. 15 Nov 2010.

<http://livewire.amnesty.org/2010/10/18/roma-community-in-romania-still-treated-like-

waste-six-years-on/>.

"Romanian activists slam president's 'racist' Roma remarks." Expatica. AFP, 11 May 2010.

Web. 14 Nov 2010.

<http://www.expatica.com/fr/news/french-news/romanian-activists-slam-president-s-

racist--roma-remarks_108361.html>.

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Greenberg, Jack.

"Report on Roma Education Today: From Slavery to Segregation and Beyond."

Columbia Law Review. 110.4 (2010): 919-1001. Print.

Ivereigh, Austen. "French Expulsions of Roma Evoke Old Ghosts."

America. 08 Nov 2010: 6-7. Print.

1. "The Incredible Shrinking President." Economist. 396.8699 (2010): 14. Print.

2. "Hot Meals for Hard Cases." Economist. 396.8699 (2010): 14. Print.

McLaughlin, Daniel. "France Warns Romania as Gypsy Expulsions Continue."

Irish Times.com. Irish Times, 28 Aug 2010. Web. 15 Nov 2010.

<http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0828/1224277778389.html>.

Pavey, Sasha. "Romania struggles with integration of Roma into society." DW-World.DE.

Deutsche Welle, 11 Oct 2010. Web. 15 Nov 2010.

<http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6136374,00.html>.

"Romanian activists slam president's 'racist' Roma remarks." Expatica. AFP, 11 May 2010.

Web. 14 Nov 2010.

<http://www.expatica.com/fr/news/french-news/romanian-activists-slam-president-s-

racist--roma-remarks_108361.html>.

Thorpe, Nick. "Limited Choices Push Roma from Romania." BBC News. BBC, 19 Aug 2010.

Web. 15 Nov 2010. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11028599>.

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