Europe’s Roma: Fenced Out from the Inside by Cheryl L.

Daytec-Yaňgot

EUROPE’S ROMA: FENCED OUT FROM

THE INSIDE
By CHERYL L. DAYTEC-YAÑGOT
Legal Studies Department
Central European University
Budapest, Hungary
June 2010

“(O)ppressive treatment of a population over an extended period of time will

create discriminatory attitudes, the effects of which will continue to assert
themselves in the actual population long after laws have been changed.” 1

Summary

While acknowledging that the Roma inclusion agenda has had gains, this
paper declares that such are in large part limited to legislation and policy-
adoption and expected benefits have not trickled down to the greater number of
Roma. On the whole, considering the hopes raised by the declaration of 2005-
2015 as the Decade of Roma Inclusion and the holding of a summit on Roma
issues, the agenda is, so far, a letdown. Drawing from the works of various
scholars and authorities on the Roma question, this paper identifies the obstacles
to the full realization of its promises: the absence of monitoring mechanisms, the
inherent limitations of minority right regimes and the lack of effective Roma
political participation. It also delves into factors that perpetuate Roma exclusion:
racism and xenophobia, capitalism, illiteracy and internalized oppression.

Introduction

1
Ian Hancock, The Consequences of Anti-Gypsism in Europe, in Other Voices, v. 2., n. 1 (February 2000),p. 4
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It would be a travesty to say that the Roma inclusion agenda, which

witnessed its moment in 2005 with the declaration of the Decade of Roma
Inclusion, has not reaped fruits.

A decade ago, the EU adopted the ‘race directive’ mandating member

states and candidate states to nullify legislations and policies militating against
“the principle of equal treatment”2 on “education, social protection including
social security and healthcare, social advantages and access to and supply of
goods and services,” including housing.3

In its 2005 Annual Report, the EU claimed that the race directive “acted as
a powerful incentive for new member states to undertake political and economic
reforms.4 Hungary, Macedonia and Romania vested legal recognition of Roma as a
national or ethnic minority5 and Russia, although not a member of EU considers
them as a “culturally autonomous nation.”6 As the EU directed, member and
candidate states adopted reforms. However, these are “sporadic measures based
on pilot projects” rather than “integrated policies and programs.”7

But the raft of legislations and policies that the European Union (EU) and
its member states adopted, does not by itsef reverse the wheel of Roma

2
European Union, Council Directive 2000/43/EC: Implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons
irrespective of racial or ethnic origin, 29 June 2000.
3
Ibid.
4
Council of the EU, EU Annual Report,, p. 95.
5
Dimitrina Petrova, The Roma: Between a Myth and the Future. Social Research, Vol. 70, No. 1 (Spring 2003), p.
143
6
Ibid.
7
Mona Nicoara (ed), Roma Activists Assess the Progress of the Decade of Roma Inclusion (2005-2006), Decade
Watch (2007), accessed from http://www.romaweb.hu/doc/evtizedprogram/2007/decadewatch_angol.pdf
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(mis)fortune. In the words of Hancock, “(a)ny population that has been devalued
to the point of losing its identity as human beings…over a period of centuries will
not automatically be seen as equals simply by passing a law.”8 Thus, observing “a
steep rise in popular prejudice, violence and intimidation against Roma,”9 Prof.
Bernard Rorke and Valeriu Nicolae declared that the corpus of the Roma inclusion
agenda’s success is the improved “rhetoric” which they also cited as a
demonstration of the EU Commission’s “shift from passive somnolence to active
engagement.”10

Sadly, all the gains in the legal and rhetorical front have not transformed
the Roma status: they remain “a pariah minority almost everywhere.11” Exclusion
is the norm of the day for Europe’s approximately 10 million Roma.12

The EU admitted that “numerous assessments of the situation of Roma…

clearly illustrate that members of this community continue to suffer marked
discrimination and social exclusion, and encounter difficulties in gaining
unhindered and equal access to employment, education, social security,
healthcare, housing, public services, and justice.”13 Seventy-five percent of Roma
wallow in poverty.14 In Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and
Slovakia, around 40% of Romani people are unemployed15 while the figure is as

8
Hancock, ibid.
9
Decade of Roma Inclusion. One Year On, What Has Changed? 2 Sept. 2009, accessed from
http://www.romadecade.org/6650
10
Ibid.
11
Petrova, supra.
12
Petrova, supra.
13
Council of the European Union General Secretariat, EU Annual Report on Human Rights, (2005).
14
Karen Plafker, “The Social Roots of Roma Health Conditions,” eumap.org: Monitoring human rights and the rule
of law in Europe. Accessed online at http://www.eumap.org/journal/features/2002/sep02/romhealth.
15
Petrova, supra.
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high as 90% in some former Soviet countries.16 They suffer the “worst health
conditions of the industrialized world together with some of the worst health
problems associated with the third world.”17 To top it all, anti-Roma violence,
sometimes manifest in murder,18 continue unabated.

Why is the inclusion agenda sailing through rough waters? Why do the
Roma, after “seven or eight hundred years”19 since their diaspora to Europe
remain outsiders where their feet are now firmly planted?

Obstacles to Roma Inclusion

The weakness inherent in the inclusion agenda and the minority rights
regimes contribute to hampering Roma integration into the European
mainstream. Moreover, the strength of the rhetoric of the EU Roma Platform is
matched only by a lackadaisical attitude to implement it.

Absence of Monitoring Mechanism

The Decade, despite its powerful rhetoric, suffers from the absence of an
“effective outcome monitoring mechanism which would measure the results of
government programs and help assess progress towards meeting the goals set at

16
Ian Hancock, The Consequences of Anti-Gypsy Racism in Europe, presented to The Council of Europe,
Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Joint Seminar on Romanies (Gypsies) in Europe, Warsaw, 20-
23 September 1994.
17
Plafker, supra.
18
Paul Legendre, Hard Times and Hardening Attitudes: The Economic Downturn and the Rise of Violence Against
Roma; written submission to the United States Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 2009; accessed
from http://www.errc.org/cms/upload/media/03/EF/m000003EF.pdf
19
Hancock, On the Origin and Current Situation of the Romani Populations.
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the inception of the Decade in 2005.”20 Moreover, statistical difficulties posed by

the lack of nationally representative disaggregated data on the situation of the
Roma on the four priority areas of housing, education, employment and health,
render it an impossibility to measure the effectiveness of Roma inclusion
policies.21 At the moment, what may be measured are inputs of States but not
their outcomes. 22 Sans a mechanism for its enforcement, the Roma inclusion
agenda is toothless, something that may not cow EU member states into
compliance, and is not guaranteed to pull out the Roma from the periphery of
society to the mainstream.

Inadequate Judicial Enforcement Mechanisms of Minority Rights Regimes

Additionally, minority rights regimes “rely on monitoring mechanisms …to

promote compliance by participating states, rather than on the judicial
enforcement of rights.23 Two of the most powerful legal instruments supporting
Roma rights, the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities
and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, are not subject to
the jurisdiction of a judicial body.24

20
Mar tin Kahanec, The Decade of Roma Inclusion: A Unifying Framework of Progress Measurement and Options
for Data Collection, IZA Research Report No. 2, April 2009, accessed from
http://www.iza.org/en/webcontent/publications/reports/report_pdfs/iza_report_21.pdf
21
Mona Nicoara (ed), Roma Activists Assess the Progress of the Decade of Roma Inclusion (2005-2006), Decade
Watch (2007), accessed from http://www.romaweb.hu/doc/evtizedprogram/2007/decadewatch_angol.pdf
22
Ibid.
23
Istvan Pogany, Minority Rights and the Roma of Central and Eastern Europe, Human Rights Law Review 2006
6(1), pp. 1-25, at p. 4.
24
Ibid.
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The problem with monitoring mechanisms is that their effectiveness is

anchored on the cooperation of governments. For instance, the success of
initiatives of the Office of the High Commissioner for National Minorities (HCNM)
and the OSCE is “unavoidably dependent upon the willingness of the parties
involved to cooperate” as recommendations of these office are devoid of
binding force and premised upon the “sovereign states’ voluntary
participation.”25 Unlike judicial enforcement mechanisms, monitoring
mechanisms restrict supranational action to enforce minority rights.

Cultural Identity-Focused Regimes

One reason for the minority rights regimes’ failure to ameliorate Roma’s
plight is their emphasis on Roma cultural and linguistic identity, falling short in
addressing socio-economic issues.26 Even with the presence of a strong legal
paradigm on protection of cultural and linguistic identity, the Roma’s diversity
could operate against them. They “do not possess a clear or coherent sense of
identity that is readily distinguishable” from that of the rest in society.27 Further,
eroding the chips of social exclusion will not necessarily erect the edifice for
economic inclusion. But the reverse is true. As the Committee on the Elimination
of Racial Discrimination pronounced, “(f)inancial means are often needed to
facilitate integration in society.”28

25
Jennifer Jackson Preece, National Minority Rights Enforcement in Europe: A Difficult Balancing Act. The Journal
of International Peace Studies.
26
Pogany, supra., p. 11
27
Ibid., at p. 5
28
Habassi v. Denmark (Communication No. 10/1997-CERD/C/54/D/1997, 06.04.1999)
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Since economic power fabricates political muscle, an employed Roma

population can hoist a bargaining power against the societal forces that continue
to undermine efforts for their integration. The Roma inclusion agenda can leap by
metes and bounds if minority rights regimes confront this class’ socio-economic
concerns. To succeed, European inclusion initiatives “need to address the most
fundamental and acute…Roma poverty.”29

Sluggishness in Implementation of Roma Inclusion Policies

The transformation into flesh of EU’s Roma rhetoric is moving at seemingly

snail-pace. For instance, the EU waited for three years,30 a long stretch of time
by any standard, after the declaration of the Decade of Roma Inclusion, to
convene a summit to adopt an EU Roma Platform. To skeptics, this demonstrates
the measure of urgency the EU attaches to Roma issues. Compounding this, the
creation in the wake of the summit of “a unit focused on Roma inclusion and a
task force on anti-Gypsism”31 within the EU Commission remains a vision.

Additionally, the Commission is in limbo as to how to operationalize the

platform.32 It is alleged that its agenda lacks specificity.33 This could be
occasioned by the lack of Roma participation in crafting the agenda itself.

29
Martin Kovats, The Emergence of European Roma Policy, p. 110
30
The first European Roma Summit was held in Sept. 2008.
31
Decade of Roma Inclusion. One Year On, What Has Changed? 2Sept. 2009, accessed from
http://www.romadecade.org/6650
32
Ibid.
33
Ibid.
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Political Marginalization

Beyond cavil, Roma representation within the policy process allows them to
identify their problems and propose viable solutions34 toward their inclusion.
Unfortunately, political participation and representation of Roma are
pronouncedly wanting,35 the “most critical of democratic deficits within and
beyond the European Union,”36 notwithstanding that the legal frameworks of
many EU countries guarantee it37 and that the Decade “aims at giving Roma a
voice in the process of inclusion.”38 Although a few Roma have made inroads into
mainstream politics,39 their political force does not constitute what it takes to
revolutionize the Roma condition. Policies affecting them are still crafted in ivory
towers by outsiders whose acquaintance with Roma realities is vicarious if not
sketchy.

Reinforcing Roma’s political alienation is their cohesion or lack of it. In the

words of Prof. Rorke, “(b) eyond the rhetoric of Romani nation, the very notion of
nationhood remains as problematic as it is elusive.”40 Roma are a “non-territorial,
non-national, non-economic population, and because no territory is jeopardized

34
Martin Kovats, The Emergence of European Roma Policy, in Will Guy (ed) Between Past and Future: The Roma
of Central and Eastern Europe, University of Hertfordshire Press, pp. 102-103
35
Stephan Muller and Zeljko Jovanovic, Pathways to Progress? The European Union and Roma Inclusion in the
Western Balkans, Budapest: OSI Roma Initiatives, p. 130
36
Bernard Rorke, No Longer and Not Yet: Between Exclusion and Emancipation. In Valeriu Nicolae, et al. (ed)s,
Roma Diplomacy. New York: Idebate Press, 2007.
37
Ibid.
38
Mona Nicoara (ed),, ibid.
39
For example, Livia Jaroki, a Romani woman was elected to the EU parliament in 2004.
40
Bernard Rorke, No Longer and Not Yet: Between Exclusion and Emancipation. In Valeriu Nicolae, et al. (ed)s,
Roma Diplomacy. New York: Idebate Press, 2007.
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by their persecution, and because no government exists to speak in their defense

or complain about their abuse,”41 their struggle for inclusion traverses thorny
paths. There is no inclusive Roma identity around which they can congregate as a
people to configure a cohesive political force. Their cultures are diverse and
distinct from one another and they are “frequently suspicious of one another,”42
apparently a byproduct of divide-and-conquer tactics of hostile governments. This
baldly negates “Romani ethnic identity (as) the basis of present day emancipator
mobilization.”43

Laying no claim to a widely Roma-supported emancipation struggle and

territory, States perceive them as incapable of raising “irredentist or secessionist
security issues” so that their concerns, especially during “the initial flurry of
efforts” to formulate and enforce minority rights regimes, are largely ignored.44
This contrasts sharply to how States panic at perceived security issues raised by
ethnic minorities that are territorial and with a strong political base raising self-
determination claims.

Many Roma are stateless45 impacting on their political participation as they

are denied suffrage, a most basic political right the exercise of which allows the
individual to influence public policy affecting him/her. Citizenship, dubbed the

41
Hancock, On the Origin and Current Situation of the Romani Populations, supra.
42
Pogany, supra. P. 9
43
Petrova, supra., p. 113
44
Wil Kymlicka, Multicultural Odysseys, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, at p. 219
45
Hancock, On the Origin and Current Situation of the Romani Populations, supra. When Czechoslovakia split into
two states, Roma became stateless. The Czech Republic came out with a new citizenship law declaring Roma
within it as Slovaks. This constrained the Roma to apply for naturalization to become Czechs. The criteria were such
that the applicants were ineligible, rendering them stateless. Approximately 100,000 Roma were affected and
rendered stateless by this citizenship law.
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“defining quality of an individual” in the 21st century46 is a warm blanket: it

endows the citizen State protection and other legal entitlements. It is therefore
problematic for stateless Roma that EU citizenship is based on one’s citizenship
within a member country.47 While they are stateless, they remain vulnerable to
exploitation and abuse.

Causes of Roma Exclusion

Exacerbating the stumbling blocks to Roma inclusion are factors that foster
exclusion. These forces operating in the socio-cultural and political milieu in the
domestic fronts are racism, capitalism, illiteracy and internalized oppression. On
closer scrutiny, some of the causes are manifestations of other causes,
demonstrating that Roma problems are viciously cyclic. But it is still important to
regard these effects as causes since they generate further problems and treating
them has the potential of alleviating the Roma issues.

Racism and Xenophobia

Roma continue to be victims of discrimination not so much because of

“discrimination in the law, but because of difficulties resulting from social
attitudes that have become ingrained into the society.”48 The media, which are
powerful purveyors of consciousness, perpetuate anti-Roma prejudice49 and

46
Angus Bancroft, Roma and Gypsy-Travellers in Europe. Burlington; Ashgate Publishing Company, 2005, p.
141.
47
Bancroft, ibid., p.157.
48
Ian Hancock, The Consequences of Anti-Gypsism in Europe, Other Voices, v. 2., n. 1 (February 2000),p. 4
49
Ibid.
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stereotypes attributing to them incivility, inferiority and a state of anomie.50 For

instance, offenses allegedly committed by Roma are sensationalized as Roma
crimes51 which is tantamount to attributing ethnicity to crimes. They are
portrayed as the spring from which debauchery flows. But the blights of poverty,
unemployment, child mortality, and illiteracy afflicting them do not receive the
same exposure.52

The natural culmination of discriminatory media projection of Roma is

reinforcement of public disdain53 and their treatment as a social residuum. To
quote Ralf Dahrendorf, "They are, if the cruelty of the statement is pardonable,
not needed. The rest of us could and would quite like to live without them."54 This
summarizes best what the public feels about Roma, also an underclass, as a result
of pejorative media projections.

Even public officials and authorities are complicit in the pervasive bigotry
against the Roma55 and this has adverse consequences on the implementation of
legislations promoting Roma interest. Thus, Michael Kocáb, Czech Human Rights
Minister remarked, “The Government passes good legislation but it is not
implemented.”56 It is claimed that those public officials who are in touch daily and

50
Gyorgi Csepeli and David Simon, Construction of Roma Identity in Eastern and Central Europe: Perception and
Self-Identification. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies; Vol. 30, No. 1 (January 2004), pp. 129-150 at p. 133;
available online at http://www.csepeli.hu/elearning/cikkek/csepeli_simon.pdf
51
Petrova, ibid.
52
Ibid.
53
Gyorgi Csepeli and David Simon, ibid.
54
(1985, p.20). Surveys conducted in
55
Paul Legendre, Hard Times and Hardening Attitudes: The Economic Downturn and the Rise of Violence Against
Roma; written submission to the United States Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 2009; accessed
from http://www.errc.org/cms/upload/media/03/EF/m000003EF.pdf
56
The Times. Roma families experience the dark side of the Velvet Revolution. 21 Nov 2009
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6926192.ece
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up-close-and-personal with Roma- the police,57 mayors, and civil servants- ignore
equality legislations due to sheer prejudice and this is more pronounced in the
former Communist countries.58

The discrimination is pervasive even among the general public 59 and there
appears to be a culture of impunity protecting the anti-Roma violent activities of
neo-Nazi groups that one remarked that the Neo-Nazis seem “able to do what the
national government (is) constrained from doing.”60 Unchecked racism
emasculates the Roma’s employment prospects and hampers their “full and equal
access to public services.”61

Racism is reflected in every facet of Roma existence. Thus, they are subject
to violence, segregation, unemployment, and poor, if not nescient access to
public services. Even the high incidence of unemployment among the Roma is
partly due to racism as being Roma is in itself a disqualification.

Capitalism

The capitalist order is a culprit in the Roma’s exclusion.62 Roma experience

proves Hummes’ assertion that “social exclusion is closely tied to the new
economic world order, globalized, with free and open markets, which isn't

57
Delia Grigore, The Romanian right and the 'strange' Roma (27 July 2003); accessed from
http://www.opendemocracy.net/people-migrationeurope/article_1387.jsp
58
Bancroft, 32.
59
Unknown reporter, The Times, 28 August 1992 as quoted in Bancroft, 101.
60
Bancroft, supra. 101.
61
Pogany, supra. at p. 6
62
Will Guy, Romani identity and post-Communist policy, in Will Guy (ed.), Between past and future: The Roma of
Central and Eastern Europe, University of Hertofrdshire Press, pp. 5-13.
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bringing prosperity or social justice to all.”63 As Petrova put it, “Roma continue to
be seen, even after the Nazi genocide, as parasitic elements, alien to the principle
of productivity and its underlying values.”64 The shift in the economic order after
the fall of communism has pushed them to subterranean crevasses of
marginalization.

Roma are said to have suffered under Stalinist rule but they were not as
wretched as in the present day.65 It integrated them into the production process
albeit they were placed in low-paying and unskilled jobs66 in agrarian cooperatives
and industrial enterprises67 which nonetheless elevated their standard of living.68
Unfortunately, these were the very same jobs “doomed to disappear” during the
shift to capitalism69 as the profit-maximizing mechanized labor rendered unskilled
labor redundant. Capitalism winged its way to directions requiring skills that
Roma were unable to acquire70 as Stalinism isolated them in the lowest strata of
the proletariat. Expelled from the capitalist workforce,71 they were pushed back
to the fringes of society where they remain to date.

63
Accessed from http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/globalized.html
64
Petrova, supra.
65
Guy, ibid.
66
Bancroft, supra., p.11.
67
League for the Fifth International. The Roma, Europe’s forgotten nationality (31 December 2002), accessed from
http://www.fifthinternational.org/content/roma-europe’s-forgotten-nationality
68
Guy, ibid.
69
Pogany, supra. at p. 6
70
Hancock, The Consequences of Anti-Gypsy Racism in Europe.
71
Bancroft, supra. 151.
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Thus under capitalism Roma tend to be fired first and hired last on account
of their inadequate skills72 and the “massive prejudice against them”73 which the
capitalist order makes no attempt to curb. These put to serious peril Roma’s labor
market reentry and reduce them into public welfare scroungers, or into
dependency on temporary jobs in the informal sector or overseas.74 To capitalism,
Roma, with insufficient or no income, are flawed consumers75 whose hands
cannot reach its wares and are therefore inconsequential if not invisible.

Some Marxists, fastened to the belief that racism is indissolubly entangled

with capitalism, propound that this profit-motivated economic system “need(s)
the pariah status of the Roma since they are a ‘silent minority’ upon whom the
social contradictions can be offloaded; they are the first to be sacked and the first
to have their social benefits cut.”76 Furthermore, the bourgeois society fostered
by capitalism “needs a scapegoat on which to focus the hatred of the backward
layers of society in order to divide the working class and forestall its unity in
struggle against exploitation and oppression.”77 Whether these claims possess
merit or not, what remains unchallenged is that Roma’s marginalization was
dramatically aggravated when capitalism was catapulted into the economic
throne in Eastern and Central Europe.

72
Ian Hancock, The Consequences of Anti-Gypsy Racism in Europe,
73
Hancock.
74
Dena Ringold, et al., Roma in an Expanding Europe: Breaking the Poverty Cycle. Washington; The World Bank
(2005), p. 9
75
Niclas Mansson, Bauman on Strangers- Unwanted Peculiarities in Michael Hviid Jacobsen, et al. (eds), The
Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman : Challenges and Critiques. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company (2008), p. 163
76
League for the Fifth International, supra.
77
Ibid.
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Lack of Education

Roma suffer from high illiteracy rate78 which in turn excludes them from
economic access as they lack the educational qualifications for the available jobs
in the aftermath of Stalinism’s fall. This is fomented by racism and learned
helplessness. Illiterate parents duplicate their misfortune in their children whom
they do not send to school due to grinding poverty and ignorance. Under
Stalinism, Roma, as a matter of policy, were shoved inside classrooms79 improving
their literacy level and engendering the rise of an educated Roma class.80 Thus,
Roma were regarded as the “teachers’ pets of the Communists, pampered and
privileged.”81 Unfortunately, due to racism which went unchecked in the post-
Cold War period, they were excluded from the classrooms or put in schools for
the mentally handicapped simply on account of their being Roma!82 Some of them
do not go to school at all. In this 21st century, it is shocking to note that some
300,000 young Roma are illiterate!83

If education is “the key to transforming the prospects of the Roma,”84 their

educational persecution logically hampers their integration and estranges them
from opportunities for a quality of life bearing little if no semblance to their
present desperate state. Since most Roma children are pushed by segregation

78
Edwin Rekosh, et al. (eds.), Separate And Unequal: Combating Discrimination Against Roma in Education.
Budapest: Public Interest Law Initiative, 2004
79
Zoltan D. Barany, Orphans of Transition: Gypsies in Eastern Europe. Journal of Democracy - Volume 9,
Number 3, July 1998, pp. 142-156
80
Guy, supra.
81
Bancroft, supra., p. 125.
82
Rekosh, supra.
83
Stephan Muller and Zeljko Jovanovic, Pathways to Progress? The European Union and Roma Inclusion in the
Western Balkans, Budapest: OSI Roma Initiatives, p. 130
84
Pogany, supra., at p. 11
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policies to schools for the mentally handicapped, it is unlikely that they will climb
up the zenith of the educational ladder. This puts a shroud of uncertainty on their
future economic prospects.

Internalized Oppression

Internalized oppression is also a cause of the Roma’s exclusion. Describing

this phenomenon, Paulo Freire in his famous work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
said:

Self-depreciation is another characteristic of the

oppressed, which derives from their internalization of the
opinion the oppressors hold of them. So often do they
hear that they are good for nothing, know nothing and
are incapable of learning anything — that they are sick,
lazy, and unproductive — that in the end they become
convinced of their own unfitness.

This is exactly the situation of the Roma: a large number of them view
their condition with the eyes of their oppressor. The danger is that “where
marginalization becomes part of the order of things, it deprives one even of the
consciousness of exclusion"85 and the oppressed unwittingly co-authors his/her
oppression. It must be stressed for it bears stressing that Freire labeled
internalized oppression as a manifestation of abuse although it contributes to it.

Cespeli and Simon attribute to “(h)ostility, rejection, negative stereotypes,

prejudice, overt and covert forms of discrimination” the proclivity of Roma to

85
Loic Wacquant, 'Inside the Zone: The Social Art of the Hustler', Theory, Culture and Society 15(2), 1998 at p.13
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internalize the negative image” perpetuated by outsiders.86 Helpless in defeating

the outsiders’ hostility, Roma disown their identity87 instead of struggling to
reverse their image88 worsening the legal and policy problems related to Roma
statistics.89 Others end up embracing an identity constructed by hostile if not
oppressive outsiders90 contributing to the lethargy of efforts to dismantle barriers
to their long walk to the gates of the mainstream.

Roma self-depreciation is not lost to the European Union, thus it has a

project to elevate “understanding and respect for the Roma among mainstream
society (and) improved self-esteem among the Roma community.”91 How
effective the project will be is for history to judge. Meantime, Roma continue to
suffer from learned helplessness which derails the struggle for their integration
into the mainstream.

Parting Words

It is wishful thinking to say that the motley legislations and policies that
form part of the Roma rights regimes will alter the Roma situation within the
Decade of Roma Inclusion. The structures upon which is anchored pervasive anti-
Roma prejudice have remained formidable for centuries and these cannot be
dismantled overnight. The Stalinist regime, even with its herculean strength in

86
Gyorgi Csepeli and David Simon, Construction of Roma Identity in Eastern and Central Europe: Perception and
Self-Identification. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies; Vol. 30, No. 1 (January 2004), pp. 129-150 at p. 135;
available online at http://www.csepeli.hu/elearning/cikkek/csepeli_simon.pdf
87
Will Guy, Romani Identity and Post-Communist Policy, in Will Guy (ed) Between Past and Future: The Roma of
Central and Eastern Europe, University of Hertfordshire Press, p. 11; Petrova, p. 114;
88
Csepeli, ibid.
89
Petrova, supra., p. 115
90
Csepeli, ibid.
91
Council of the EU, EU Annual Report, 79.
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Europe’s Roma: Fenced Out from the Inside by Cheryl L. Daytec-Yaňgot

prohibiting racial bigotry92 succeeded only in momentarily suppressing anti-

Gypsyism, which swiftly resurrected as soon as the Berlin wall collapsed. It will
take decades if not centuries before the lingering remnants of anti-Roma
sentiments will vanish into thin air. After all, the colored peoples of America
continue to suffer from discrimination long after desegregation was struck down.

Roma themselves should form a cohesive force to tear down structures

against them. The European Union should adopt judicially enforceable
supranational legislations to complement existing minority rights regimes to
liberate the Roma from the abyss of discrimination they were hurled into. States
should translate their political commitments into integrated policies that will
guarantee holistic development for their Roma constituencies.

Nothing less than these can meaningfully contribute to a comprehensive

theory of justice in Europe.

92
Hancock, The Consequences of Anti-Gypsy Racism in Europe, supra.
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