05.12.2014 Increasing xenophobia and Rroma-hostility in Italy

Sigona (2014) reports on increasing xenophobia and Rroma-hostility in Italy. The author is concerned about how Rroma have frequently become the target of xenophobic attacks in the last few months and years. To counteract this increasingly xenophobic climate, the president of the Tuscany region, Enrico Rossi, set an example with a photo – showing him together with a group of Rroma: “In the photo, Rossi stands flanked by a family of men, women and children. It’s a Sunday afternoon in Florence. “Let me introduce my neighbours” reads the description posted on Facebook. His neighbours are Romanian Roma. […] The picture was taken just a few weeks after Matteo Salvini, the new leader of the anti-immigration, anti-EU Northern League, paid a controversial visit to a Roma camp in Bologna to see how “tax money was spent”. Salvini has made regular verbal attacks on Roma and migrants, a core part of his party’s attempt to rebrand itself as Italy’s answer to the French Front National. The steady rise in his approval rating would suggest that it’s working.” As in France is, the public focus in Italy lies on a marginalised minority of Rroma, who live in informal settlements and are presented in a most biased way. Right-wing nationalist parties present the minority as scapegoats for problems that have their origin in society as a whole. The majority of the estimated 90,000 to 110,000 Rroma that have been living integrated in Italy since generations are largely hidden.