Daily Archives: February 14, 2014

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14.02.2014 The Rroma policy of the European Union and the free movement of persons

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Gutschker (2014) spoke with justice commissioner and vice-president of the European Commission, Viviane Reding, on the Rroma policy of the European Union. In the first part of the interview, the conversation focused around the question as to whether social benefits for non-working immigrants from EU-member states are legal or not. Right-wing politicians regularly accuse immigrant Rroma to unfairly burden the German social welfare system. Reding takes the position that the social benefits come to the good of immigrants with very low wages who are dependent on assistance. Nobody will receive social assistance just for the good of it, she states. For the interviewer, the debate on social benefits is in truth an argument about pan-European solidarity. For Viviane Reding however, the debate circles around questions of a liberal economic market, which allows the needed workforce to freely circulate. It is astonishing that even Reding holds the idea most of the so-called poverty immigrants are Rroma, although the ethnicity is not recorded in statistics. She sees the need to support these disadvantaged Rroma, so that the spiral of poverty can be broken. Concerning the social benefits received by EU-immigrants, Reding sees the numbers as strongly exaggerated. Only a very small part of the support payments go to immigrants from other EU countries. An amount three times as high is said to go to immigrants from third countries. Reding also wants that the EU countries better use their allocated social funds from the European Union and defuse municipal focal points. The restriction of the free movement of persons – as the Swiss electorate decided on the 9th of February – is said to be incompatible with the principle of a shared internal market: “You can not take advantage of the internal market with all the advantages for export and at the same time restrict the free movement of persons. In December, we had a meeting of EU interior ministers, and all agreed to the above – with the exception of the British. There was also agreement that the right to move freely does not establish a right to access the social systems. Rights are always associated with duties” (compare Epoch Times 2014, Spiegel 2014).  

Frigelj (2014) reports on the visit of EU-commissioner László Andor in Duisburg. Duisburg was almost constantly in the headlines during 2013. Again and again, newspapers reported – in a more or less populist fashion – on impoverished, criminal Rroma clans from Romania and Bulgaria, which are supposedly flooding into the city. László Andor tried to get an idea of the situation on the spot. He attended employment-assistance institutions, talked with immigrants, residents, social workers, and police officers. Andor acknowledged, the article states, that the city is dealing with a problem of poverty and Germany and its municipalities were entitled to money from the new “relief fund for the poorest” of the European Union. The article seems factual and objective, but indirectly spreads the idea that Rroma are almost exclusively poorly educated, marginalized people who escape poverty and discrimination in their home countries: “The highly qualified doctors and nurses are attracted mainly to southern Germany. To Duisburg and Dortmund, which have a high proportion of vacant dwellings and lower end real estate, where up to 90% unqualified immigrants with large families are drawn. From around 600 monthly newcomers, almost half are children.” That there are also many well-integrated Rroma in Germany is not mentioned.

 

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14.02.2014 Social perception of the Rroma in Great Britain

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Yaron Matras, the author of the recently published book “I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies”, talks in his latest article in the Guardian about the social perception and role of the Rroma in Great Britain. Simple employees, such as the hairdresser of a friend of the author, are said to be complaining about the greater economic competition from immigrants such as the Rroma. In this economically motivated racism, Rroma are wrongly equated with Romanians and commonly used stereotypes about Rroma are strengthened: “Romanians are equated with Roma – hence the association with caravans and the shyness to appear politically incorrect. […] It is the image of Roma on our streets that triggers an emotional reaction, more so than the thought of just any citizen from new EU member states arriving at a job centre in Basingstoke or Leeds. It was the Roma who were singled out last November by the deputy prime minister as “intimidating” and “offensive” in their behaviour. Unfounded allegations that Roma were kidnapping children in Greece and Ireland didn’t help either.“ The really important question – and here Matras is absolutely right – is not how to bring the Rroma to integrate themselves, but how to manage to change the incorrect notions of the majority society about the Rroma. Because if the Rroma are given the opportunity to integrate – what in most countries is only possible very limited so far – they will doubtlessly do it.

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14.02.2014 Romanian President convicted for racist abuse against Rroma

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Various newspapers report the conviction of Romania’s President Traian Basescu. Basescu who has been repeatedly noticed for his dismissive remarks against Rroma. In 2011, he commented publicly that Rroma steal in buses. During an official visit to Slovenia in 2010, he stated that travelling Rroma would traditionally live from what they steal. In 2007, he insulted a journalist as a “dirty gypsy”. In response to Basescu’s statements, the Rroma organization Romani Criss fielded a complaint at the Romanian Council against discrimination. The council has convicted Basescu for a symbolic fine of 600 lei (160 Swiss francs). Whether this conviction will change Basescu’s behaviour, is doubtful. The newpaper Zeit (2014) complements that Basescu has not yet responded to the conviction. However, for the Romanian Council against discrimination the message tthat even a president can be convicted for racist abuse is important (compare Aarauer Zeitung 2014, Basellandschaftliche Zeitung 2014, Le Figaro 2014, Neue Luzerner Zeitung 2014, Stimme Russlands 2014, TAZ 2014, 20 minutes).

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14.02.2014 Right-wing nationalist mayor spreads fear among Slovak Rroma

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Jancarikova (2014) reports on Rroma in Banska Bystrica, in Central Slovakia. A new mayor in this city was elected two months ago: Marian Kotleba. Kotleba belongs to a right-wing nationalist party and is known for his racist remarks against Rroma. He repeatedly called Rroma parasites and benefiters of social welfare. Kotleba makes use of the tough economic times and portrays the Rroma as scapegoats for the economic ills: „Kotleba, who has neo-Nazi roots, is gaining political traction by casting Slovakia’s large and impoverished Roma minority as a scapegoat for, rather than victim of, a sluggish economy. […]”Kotleba sells himself as the protector of ‘decent’ people against ‘Roma parasites’ and corrupt politicians,” Alena Kluknavska, an expert on extremism from the Bratislava-based Commenius university, told AFP.“ According to the Slovakian minister of labour, 60% of the 400,000 Slovak Rroma are integrated.

Jancarikova, Tatiana (2014) Rise of far-right sparks fear amid Slovak Roma. In: Digital Journal online vom 11.2.2014. http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/rise-of-far-right-sparks-fear-amid-slovak-roma/article/370076

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14.02.2014 «France’s unwanted Roma»

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As many before him, Astier (2014) reports about the forced evictions of illegal Rroma settlements in France. At first, he stresses that France has one of the harshest policies towards this minority. Every year, thousands of Rroma are deported and illegal settlements evicted. However, Astier wrongly assumes that all Rroma in France are immigrants from Southeast Europe, mainly from Romania. The integrated, invisible Rroma representing the actual majority, he considers as being non-existent: “Like most of the estimated 20,000 ethnic Roma living in France, Alex comes from Romania. And like most, he has been expelled from one squalid camp to the next for years.“ Regarding the forced evictions, Astier emphasizes that the expulsions don’t change much of the effective situation, since constantly new illegal settlements are built. The reference to precarious security situations is often just an excuse for evictions: „One aim of such operations is to remove unsightly, unsafe, and unsanitary sites that have no water or electricity. However, Loret and others point out that the exercise is self-defeating. As soon as police tear down one camp, another is built nearby. […] „They live in increasingly precarious living conditions that prevent them for integrating locally,” says ethnologist Martin Olivera. „They are being maintained in a nomadic way of life they have not chosen.““

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14.02.2014 Eight-year-old Rroma girl killed by a fire

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Numerous French newspapers report about an incident in a Rroma camp in Bobigny. For reasons not yet known, in that camp in question, an unexpected fire started. The informal accommodations were giving refuge to more and more Romanian and Bulgarian Rroma, who fled from forced evictions in the neighbourhood. At the time the fire started, the camp encompassed around 200 inhabitants. About one-fifth of the informal dwellings were destroyed. The camp itself had no access to running water, which would have allowed to extinguish the fire, although a demand had been filed to the city major months ago. The victim of the fire, an eight-year-old Rroma girl, had been enrolled in a primary school in Bobigny. Rroma camps in France are regularly affected by fires and other incidents. However, there is uncertainty about how the fires are started. Manuel Valls stresses that they are linked to the precarious safety conditions in many camps, what legitimizes his harsh eviction practices. Another possibility is that they are linked to politically motivated arson. During the year 2013, twenty-two Rroma camps were affected by incidents, according to the Ligue des droits de l’ Homme, which compromised about 2’000 people. The mayor of Bobigny, Catherine Peyge, pointed attention to the persisting, severe marginalization of the Rroma that has made this incident possible. In collaboration with Cécile Duflot, the minister for social housing, they are trying to find permanent accommodation for the Rroma affected by the fire (Le Parisien 2014, Le point in 2014, Le Nouvel Observateur in 2014, Libération 2014 BFMTV 2014) .

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14.02.2014 Debate about social conditions in the countries of origin of people threatened with deportation

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With the debate over the right to stay of a Rroma family from Macedonia in Germany, the massive disagreements over the conditions in the countries of origin of people threatened with deportation became apparent. While proponents of deportation rely on country analyses, which state that no or very minimal discrimination against minorities in countries like Macedonia exists, supporters of the asylum seekers claim the exact opposite: “With a deportation to Macedonia the Roma family faces a hopeless fate”, writes member of parliament Kühn-Mengel to Rosenke. If the family will be deported, the Rustems will be exposed to “institutional discrimination”, warns the politician.” The father of the Rustem family had been beaten so heavily in his home country that he lay in comma for several days, according to his own statement. Subjective expertise, which can rarely be proved with documents, usually face hard resistance against official analyses that assess the social situation in a country (Kölnische Rundschau 2014, Wochenspiegel 2014).

Gajevic (2014) reports on the deportation of Rroma from Germany to Kosovo. She points out that in the opinion of social scientists and left-wing politicians, the situation for many Rroma in the Kosovo is precarious. Because they often do not speak Albanian, an enrolment into school is usually not possible. The supply of water, electricity, food and sanitation is often poor and discrimination as a minority is anything but irrelevant:  „Largely unnoticed by the public, Rroma living here in Germany are increasingly forced to move back to Kosovo. According to the left party viewpoint, this is often a return into misery. The response to a request by the left party to the federal government shows that in the past two years, nearly 850 people were reported into the Balkan country, nearly half of whom were Roma. [ … ] The federal government signed in 2010 a readmission agreement – against fierce criticism – with the republic that split from Serbia, which allows to send back 2500 refugees every year.”

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14.02.2014 Community housing for Rroma immigrants in Germany

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Michels (2014) reports on the project of the German Förderverein Roma, who wants to settle immigrant Rroma families on the former campus of Bockenheim: “15 percent of the residential land at the current campus that the university wants to have vacated by 2017, are meant for housing associations. A total of 1’200 dwellings are planned to be built. Until the end of January, 21 initiatives for community living have submitted their applications to the land-owner ABG holding. The largest of these, the “Wohngruppe Philosophicum“, supports the initiative for Roma families.” The head of the Förderverein Roma, Joachim Brenner, is hoping that through the financial support of foundations and the EU and with a convincing concept, he will be awarded the contract.

Palm (2014) states to the housing project on the former campus of Bockenheim, that the urban housing association ABG decidedly announced that it won’t give the contract to any project that cannot independently finance itself:  “We will subsidize nothing and nobody”, Junker said, whose company develops the campus. […] The city administration is also sceptical. So many people “with complex problems” to focus on a small space does not correspond with the line of thoughts of the Frankfurt social administration, said the spokeswoman of social department head Daniela Birkenfeld (CDU).”

Voigt (2014) reports on a housing project for Rroma in Berlin-Neukölln, for which the  Frankfurt integration board has now shown interest. In the Harzer Strasse in Neukölln, a non-profit housing company bought neglected apartment buildings and renovated them for immigrant Rroma families. In Frankfurt, the Berlin social worker Daniel Ibrahimovic reported on the chronology of the project: “The neighbours were curious and came by more often. Then the project proved to be positively developing. “Slowly but surely people realize that Roma are not another species”, said Ibrahimovic, who belongs to the minority himself. Gradually you have shown the people, “that these are also humans.”” Ideas about cultural alterity and incompatibility hold themselves persistently in the politicized debate. That these are primarily poverty issues that are hyped up to cultural differences, is not discussed.

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14.02.2014 Booklet on the rights of marginalized Rroma angries SVP

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Francey (2014) reports on the publication of a brochure by the legal faculty of Geneva that informs marginalized Rroma in the city about their fundamental rights. The brochure explains people in precarious financial situations their rights: if they are entitled to benefits from the state, if they can be fined by the police for begging or if they a license as a street musician. The booklet is written in both French and Romanian as well as in pictograms, to reach people who struggle reading. The brochure has now been attacked by the SVP-Geneva. The right-wing conservative party sees the publication as an invitation for socially vulnerable people to come to Switzerland. It has fielded a complaint against the brochure to the government of Geneva.

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14.02.2014 Arrest of Bosnian Rroma boy reinforces racial prejudice

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The arrest of a minor Rroma boy of Bosnian origins in Vienna encourages racial prejudice against the Rroma. The 12-year-old boy is said to have repeatedly committed pick-pocketing. The newspaper Heute explains the motive for the thefts as being culturally determined and thus fuels false, absurd notions of a ethnically conditioned delinquency:  “The boy is a Bosnian citizen and comes from a Roma family. He is illiterate and has never been to school. [ … ] He may belong to a European-wide clan and may have been specifically trained to steal, as he already appeared in other states.”  The reference to the ethnicity of the boys is totally unnecessary and inconsiderate. It only encourages racist prejudices against members of the minority. Rroma are not more criminal than the representatives of other ethnic groups. Unfortunately, these prejudices are kept persist-ently (Today 2014 Today 2014/II ) .

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14.02.2014 An unemotional perspective on immigrants from Southeast Europe

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Mappes-Niediek (2014) takes a dispassionate look at immigrants from South East Europe who are settling down in Germany. He tries to draw a differentiated picture of the reasons for their migration, which lies beyond simple generalizations. Poor Rroma from Southeast Europe don’t migrate to Western Europe or Germany with the aim to abuse the local social welfare system. They come with the aim to lead a life in dignity. Their own family and close friends provide a social safety network, on which one can rely on during hard times: “The poverty immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria don’t come here because of the social benefits in Germany, but because you can live a better life here. They come with their families and with close friends. [ … ] The poorest of the poor who live in Romania, mainly in rural areas, mostly don’t migrate at all.” Mappes-Niediek then turns against the widely held view that education is the key to solving most problems. Education only brings something, the author states, if Rroma are allowed to integrate into the economy and the economy offers enough available jobs. Otherwise, a university degree doesn’t helps to improve one’s situation: “Education is not the key, or at least not there where the poverty immigrants come from. Everywhere in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe the relationship between education and a good life is broken, and indeed for everyone, not only for the Roma. An entire generation has made the experience that education doesn’t help in anything. They have seen it with their parents. The father was an engineer, his mother a Russian teacher. Today, the mother goes to clean and the father is drinking […].” With these statements, Mappes-Niediek takes a pessimistic view at the stagnant economies of many countries of the former Eastern bloc. The denial of benefits and possibilities to integrate is said to create what many want to prevent: slums, problems, crime. Mappes-Niediek takes a dispassionate look at the debate about poverty immigrants from Eastern Europe. However, he also perpetuates ideas of mainly impoverished, marginalized Rroma, as they are spread by the mass media and therefore established and culturalised.

This view contrasts with the short article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which focuses on the work of the social worker Lucia Bleibel with immigrant Rroma. Bleibel grew up in Slovakia and speaks Rromanes and Romanian. On behalf of the Internationale Bund and the city of Hanau she takes care of the integration of marginalized Rroma in the Hessen town. Bleibel’s task is to remind the immigrants of the compulsory schooling, the German health care system and the compliance with general rules. The short text focuses entirely on the visible, impoverished Rroma and thereby keeps politicized notions of cultural alterity upright, despite or perhaps because of its emphatic perspective on the topic (Glaser-Lotz 2014).

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14.02.2014 Acid attack on Rroma as symptomatic for the radicalization against the minority

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As already last week, by many French newspapers address an acid attack against Rroma who live outdoors near the Place de la République. The offender is most likely the owner of an adjoining house, who regularly passed by the Rroma with his dog. Libération (2014) points out that the acid attack is emblematic of the repressive policy of France towards the Rroma. This opinion is shared by an organization of concerned citizens – Entraides-Citoyennes – which complains about an increasing radicalization and dis-inhibition in the public behaviour towards the Rroma, which isn’t far anymore from an open incitement against the minority (Entraides-Citoyennes 2014). Thouny (2014) from Le Nouvel Observateur points out that already last August, a Romanian Gypsy woman was victimized by an acid attack and suffered burns on her arms and legs. Volunteers have invited the affected Rroma to file a complaint against the perpetrator to the local police.

Le Monde (2014) reports on 11th of February that the perpetrator was taken in police custody. The man denies having doused the mattresses of the Rroma with acid. Rather, he claims to have used soap and Javel water as expression of his displeasure against the homeless in his quarter.

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