Daily Archives: September 27, 2013

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27.09.2013 Rroma in France

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Balmer (2013) reports on the massive criticism of the EU commission on the French Rroma policies. The reason for the complaint were the repeated statements by Interior Minister Manuel Valls, that the majority of the Rroma are not compatible with the French due to their specific lifestyle and should return to Romania. With these statements Valls drew the criticism of many of his Socialist party colleagues but at the same time also a lot of sympathy on the part of many French mayors who feel alone in confronting informal Rroma camps around Paris. In a statement, Viviane Reding, Vice-President of the European Commission, reminded Valls about the agreement of 2010, where  France promised the compliance of freedom of travel and establishment for all EU citizens, including Rroma. France has a law that allows deportation of asylum seekers if they cannot raise enough money for their own livelihood.

Nunès (2013) gives an overview of the responses to Valls statements by various French mayors. Most, including socialist politicians, agree with Valls on his order and return policies. The reasoning is always similar: France is not responsible for solving the world’s problems. With their anarchical way of life, Rroma are not compatible with the French society and should be deported. They are a massive financial burden on the French welfare state, which is battered enough already by the economic crisis. For Clermont-Ferrand, they are primarily passive victims who can not be saved by the overstretched French government at this time and thus must be expelled. By the assignment of a victim role, Ferrand wants to distance himself from ethnic categorizations: “Il n’est pas question de stigmatiser une population, mais, dans une période de pénurie d’emplois et de logements, nous ne sommes pas en mesure de réussir leur intégration. Il faut mettre un terme à l’hémorragie rom en France” [One should not stigmatise a population, but at a time where there is a scarcity of jobs and housing, we are not in a position to achieve their integration. We have to stop the Rroma bleeding in France.]

Vallaud Najat Belkacem, Women’s Rights Minister, clarified the position of the French government in the national Rroma politics: The repatriation is part of a range of measures in dealing with Rroma. French Rroma policies are determined by assertiveness and humanity: assertivness in the sense that one prevents misery, which is no way to live,  by the destruction of Rroma camps. Humanity, in the sense that one always promotes access to education, employment and housing where possible (Le Point, 2013). That these humanitarian interventions are permeated of political views and intentions is an important detail that is not discussed in more detail by Belkacem. Instead, evictions are declared to be humanitarian measures to protect residents who need to be saved from untold misery. That living in an illegal settlement could be an unpleasant but acceptable alternative to permanent expulsion practices for those affected is not considered.

Libération (2013) states that Valls sees his policies as the ones  of leftist politician who takes the suffering and distress of French citizens seriously. That these are anti-socialist policies, which make a distrinct difference between the equality of people established in France, he negates completely: “Le ministre a répété que son action est «celle d’un homme de gauche». «J’ai le devoir (…) d’écouter l’exaspération, les colères, les souffrances de notre peuple», a-t-il argumenté” [The minister repeated that his action is “the one of a leftist”. “I have the duty (…) to listen to the exasperation, the anger, the sufferings of our people.] The Housing Minister, Cécile Duflot, criticised Valls violently stating that he continues to carry on Nicolas Sarkozy’s policies and set a highly questionable order policy based on ethnic origin.

In her analysis, Soullier (2013) also emphasizes the strong connection between French Rroma policies and the election campaign and its associated views of politicians. So Marie Le Pen continue to talk about a “horde” of Rroma who will come to France starting  in January 2014, with the enactment of freedom of movement agreement with Bulgaria and Romania. Other MPs, such as Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, assign to Rroma criminal habits need to be prevented. Few politicians like Dominique Voynet recognise that the problem is cannot only be attributed to the Rroma of desire for integration, but is also the result of a lack of will on the part of government and society to accept them, “C’est difficile de reprocher aux personnes de ne pas s’intégrer quand on leur refuse le droit de travailler.” [It is difficult to reproach people not to integrate when one forbids them to work.]

Social geographer Olivier Legros know also point out that only visible Rroma living in camps are discussed by the media and politicians. The invisible, integrated Rroma are thereby condemned to non-existence, the general public does not even know they exists at all. The Rroma are a projection screen for the unwanted: “Dans le discours politique français, les Roms désignent des personnes qui habitent des bidonvilles aux marches des villes, qui viennent d’Europe centrale et qui menacent la sécurité des citoyens. Finalement, le Rom est une métaphore, un mot qui décrit des indésirables. Ceux qui se sont intégrés, on n’en parle jamais. […] Comment savoir, on ne parle jamais de ceux qui se sont intégrés? Il y en a peut-être dans votre bureau, dans votre entreprise mais ils n’éprouvent peut-être pas le besoin de le dire tous les jours.” (20 minutes France 2013) [In the French political discourse, Roma designate people who live in slums near urban centres, who came from Central Europe and threaten the safety of citizens. Finally, the Rom is a metaphor, a word that describes the undesirable. Those who are integrated, we never talk about. […] How do you know, we never speak of those who are integrated? They may be in your office, in your business, but they may not feel the need to say so every day]. According to Legros, the really questionable thing is that poverty is raised as a stigma and criminalised. It obscures the social conditions that are not the result of personal decisions and actions , but the result of structural, socially institutionalized and maintained inequalities.

Christian Vanneste of the extreme rightist  RPF party (Les Obervateurs 2013), takes the debate as an opportunity to perform an alleged disclosure of the true problems. He pours into racist generalisations that he does not see as racist because they correspond to the real behaviour of the Rroma and are confirmed by statistics. Rright at the beginning of the article he states that there is a clear link between the presence of the Rroma and a rise in crime rates: “Il y a un rapport entre la présence dans plusieurs grandes agglomérations d’une concentration d’immigrés roumains et bulgares et la délinquance.” [There is a correlation between the presence in several large agglomerations of Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants and criminality.] He further dishes out the popular notion of networks of organised beggars, con artists and criminal children gangs, elevating the exploitation of Rroma by Rroma as a cultural trait. He also quantifies the damage caused metal theft done by Rroma at 800,000 euro. For Vanneste, it is clear that the debate about the Rroma is not about racism but about objectified facts. What he does, is racism with questionable statistics and a correlation of parameters that de facto have nothing to do with each other, because there is simply no such thing as “ethnic culture of delinquency”. The rest of the article consists of a tirade against the EU, which presumes to prescribe the “right” policy decisions to the French government.

Comment: Valls statements, which are culturising and generalising are once again a prime example of the massive politicization of the Rroma identity, which is presented to the outside world as natural and anti-political. It must be stressed once more that integration is a two way process. If Rroma access to education, employment and health care is denied, the integration is nearly impossible. Quite a few French politicians seem not to want to pursue such an integration, because they believe from the outset that Rroma cannot be integrated. Whether they have ever spoken with Rroma for a longer time is highly doubtful. The polemic shows how much policies are controlled by entrenched opinions: One wants well-educated, financially strong immigrants with high social integration capabilities. If they do not meet this ideal, ethnic characteristics are exploited to declare them not “to be integrated”. That this assignment steeped in political and moral views is usually ignored. Rather, this is presented as indisputable nature of the Rroma.

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27.09.2013 Rroma Debate in Germany

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Martens (2013) casts a sober look at the predicted mass immigration of Rroma from Romania and Bulgaria when the treaty on the free movement of people becomes a reality in January 2014. He criticises the dire prophecies by pointing to the admissions of other Eastern European countries where similar predictions were made. After Poles were allowed free establishment in Europe, it did not come to the predicted mass exodus. A standard objection is usually that one strives to better the situation of Rroma in their countries of origin with regard to access to education and the labour market. At the meeting “For educational situation of Roma in (and out of) Southeastern Europe” different social scientists and politicians spoke about their experiences and insights. Martens criticises how these subjective views are presented as objective truths, and in turn reproduce stereotypes, despite the good intentions behind it. For example, the green politician Franz Romeo in his speech uncritically reproduces the prejudice “Serbs and Bulgarians, refer to Roma children as “brown gold”” because they are abused for the benefit of organ trafficking.

Deutsche Welle (2013) reports, as many other media previously did, about angered residents over new Rroma migrants in Duisburg. Indignant voices about what are deemed Rroma insults convey an image of the incompatibility of the Rroma and German way of life. Such debates are as old as the history of migration itself. Immigrants’ cultural characteristics are exploited in order to channel the fears of the people associated with a changing situation. Debates on migration and immigrants always reproduce ideas about ethnic unity in the sense of ethnic nationalism. That migration can also be enriching, is, however, often like negated. Instead, the media attention focuses on problem cases. That these represent the norm rather than the exception is highly doubtful.

The preconceived notion that most Rroma have none or a very poor education is also reproduced by Aufderheide (2013) in her article on programs for Rroma in Duisburg. For better integration, immigrants will be tested on language skills, education and work experience. Aufderheide, not wrongly but very uncritically, speaks generally of a low education level and writes them off as welfare recipients. This supports conservative voices who fear a massive impact of immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria on the German social welfare system: “When the complete freedom of movement enters in force in the coming year, people will stand in line in front of the job centres to submit applications for Hartz IV. Skilled workers, which employers are clamouring for, will only be found in this population with a magnifying glass. Which of course does not necessarily mean that these people can’t do anything.” The idea that successful integration can be promoted by encouraging people, seems to be completely alien to her.

On the immigration debate, Grunau (2013) gives an closer look at the issue of poverty. He notes with a reference to Mappes-Niediek that it is often the poverty of immigrants, which is perceived by residents as being undesirable. This is then mixed with a cultural background: “They are just as rejected as poor people all over the world. The problem is poverty, not Roma, which the author proves with many examples.” Also forgotten in the polemics debate about poverty immigrants is that in the 1960s and 1970s, tens of thousands of Rroma arrived as guest workers from Yugoslavia to Germany and live there well integrated. What one can observe, therefore, is the ethnicization of a poverty problem. Ignoring the integrated, invisible Rroma, many of whom they fear to be publicly recognised as Rroma and named as such so because they fear that they could be excluded from their social environment is associated with this phenomenon: “This is also an investigation on Roma who came as guest workers in the 60s, 70s, and have noted: “We are perceived as Italians, as Turks, Yugoslavs we’re doing much better here if we are not perceived as Roma..” They have kept their identity secret, with the consequence that they have made ​​a career, are integrated, are established” (Grunau 2013/II). Barbara Lochbihler, Member of the European Parliament, sees the lack of integration of Rroma in the education system in most European countries as an important factor for the persistence of poverty and the remaining low enrolment rates. The experience with education, which parents could be pass on to their children is lacking.

Arbutina (2013) analyses the Rroma political participation ability. He notes with a reference to Zeljko Jovanovic of the Open Society Foundation, that for many Rroma, due to the blatant poverty, politics constitutes an incidental phenomenon. Moreover, in several Eastern European countries the will to let Rroma really to participate in the country’s politics is lacking. Socially widespread nationalist views hinder the implementation of political multiethnic states in which all voices are allowed to speak. As an example of the political and social integration, Macedonia can be identified: there are well-established parties representing the interests of the Rroma and Rromanes can be studied as a language in the universities. Jovanovic stresses, however, that Rroma should not only build on the integration will of governments but should also put more efforts themselves towards a successful integration.

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27.09.2013 Racist Rroma Register of the Swedish Police

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Wolff (2013) speaks about the Rroma register, which has been operated by the Swedish police for eight years and caused quite a sensation. The register systematically recorded Rroma established in Sweden, regardless of age, gender, or other parameters. The focus, therefore, was not, according to Wolff, the registration of delinquent Rroma, but the categorisation of all Rroma in Sweden, which were thereby put under general suspicion. A member of the Swedish Police Corps reported this illicit register to the police anonymously and so caused it to be known.

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27.09.2013 Anti-Rroma Pogroms in Poland

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A seemingly harmless incident between a 16-year-old Rroma and a 13-year-old ethnic Poles in the city Andrychow led to massive tensions. A petition and a now-banned Facebook group called for the expulsion of around 140 Rroma from this city of 20,000 inhabitants. The case is symptomatic of the continued segregation of Rroma in Poland according to Focus (2013), as well as in the neighbouring Slovakia. Low education rates and poor integration led to a persistence of poverty and exclusion: “Many Slovak and Polish Roma are illiterate, unemployed and on welfare. Because despite compulsory education, not all children go to school – partly out of fear of discrimination, partly out of fear of assimilation – the way the next generation is poised to misery.”

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