Romani mobilities in Europe: Multidisciplinary perspectives International Conference, 14‐15 January 2010, University of Oxford Conference Proceedings Edited by Nando Sigona 1 Romani mobilities in Europe: Multidisciplinary perspectives International Conference, 14‐15 January 2010, University of Oxford Table of Contents Welcome and introduction Nando Sigona and Roger Zetter, Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford 4 T. Acton (University of Greenwich) Theorising mobility: Migration, nomadism, and the social reconstruction of ethnicity 5 S. Benedik (University of Graz) On the streets and in the bed: Gendered and sexualised narratives in popular perceptions of Romani migrations within Central and Eastern Europe. 11 M. Bidet Will French Gypsies always stay nomadic and out of the law-making process? 20 E. Butler (University of Glasgow) and L. Cashman (Canterbury Christ Church University) Romani mobilities in the context of the new EU - what could or should the EU be doing? 28 I. Clough Marinaro (The American University of Rome) Life on the run: biopolitics and the Roma in Italy 36 M. Conte, A. Rampini and O. Marcu (Catholic University of Milan) Cash cash: young Roma and strategies for social prestige 41 E. Di Giovanni (University of Palermo) Like suspended particles: The long way to social inclusion of a Roma community in Sicily 48 Y. Erolova (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) Labour migrations of the Bulgarian Roma in Poland (A case study on Roma from Balchik) 52 D. Farget (University of Montreal) The Roma people’s mobility in Europe: a challenge in terms of human rights 57 M. Greenfields (Buckinghamshire New University) Settlement & anti-Gypsyism: ‘if you know someone hates you before you start, you puts up the barrier’ 62 R. Grewal (University of Edinburgh) Institutional inertia and international initiatives: debilitating for Roma activism? 71 M. Guet (Council of Europe) Challenges related to Roma migration and freedom of movement in Europe 77 R. Guyon and M. Rigolot (CASNAV) A new European issue for the French Republic: the schooling of the migrant Roma pupils and the Traveller children 84 R. Humphris (University of Oxford) How UK asylum and migration policy has affected Roma mobility - a historical perspective 90 Å. Jansson (UCL) Deviance and Diversity: Zigenare and Romer within the Swedish Minoritetspolitik 101 P. Kabachnik (CUNY) and A. Ryder Nomadism and New Labour: constraining Gypsy and Traveller mobilities in Britain 110 E. Marushiakova and V. Popov (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) Gypsy/Roma European migrations from 15th century till nowadays 126 2 Romani mobilities in Europe: Multidisciplinary perspectives International Conference, 14‐15 January 2010, University of Oxford T. Marx (University of Leipzig) ‘Roma-elite’ and the problem of re-presentation. First outcomes of a PhD- project 132 A. McGarry (University of Brighton) Ethnicity-blind and differentiated treatment: fine-tuning the EU Policy on Roma 141 M. Olivera Interrogating the doxa about Roma migrations: the realities of Romanian Roma in Parisian area 147 G. Picker (University of Milan) Welcome ‘in’. Romani migrants and Left-wing Tuscany (1988-2007) 152 J. Richardson (De Monfort University) Discourse dissonance: an examination of media, political and public discourse and its impact on policy implementation for Roma, Gypsies and Travellers at a local level 166 I. Rostas (CEU) The responses of Romanian authorities to Roma migration 197 T. Skotvedt (Ministry of Labour and Social Inclusion, Norway) Romanian Roma migrations to Norway – push and pull factors 203 M. Slavkova (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) Romani migrations from Bulgaria to Spain: challenges and perspectives 210 M. Solimene (University of Iceland) Xoraxané Romá, Romanian Rom and Rome 215 H. Synková (University of Pardubice) Can NGOs serve as mobility channels? 220 P. Vermeersch (University of Leuven) Between Europeanisation and discrimination: the Roma as a special focus of EU policy 226 M. Willers, A. Ryder and C. Johnson (the Community Law Partnership) Facilitating the Gypsy and Traveller way of life in England and Wales through the courts 237 S. Zahova (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) Refugee migrations of Roma, Ashkali, and Egyptians to Montenegro and their impact on the communities’ social and cultural development 251 3 Romani mobilities in Europe: Multidisciplinary perspectives International Conference, 14‐15 January 2010, University of Oxford Welcome and introduction Nando Sigona and Roger Zetter, Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford Policy and media attention to Romani migration and mobility is mainly the result of two interrelated phenomena: the raising intolerance toward Roma all over Europe, and the fear for Roma westward mobility. As a result, the political discourse is polarised between two poles: security and control, on one hand, and antidiscrimination and minority rights on the other. This attention has also produced a number of ‘calls for tenders’, several policy workshops and a few policy reports on the subject matter, but, to date, not much empirical and academically sound research and informed debate on this phenomenon. On 14-15 January 2010, the RSC held an international conference on ‘Romani mobilities in Europe’, which brought together Romani and non-Romani scholars, students, activists and practitioners from across a variety of disciplines. The main aim of the conference was to map ongoing empirical research on the issue of Roma migration and mobility and to open up the debate to alternative framings. The papers presented at the conference explored mobility from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. For once, the policy agenda and its implicit and explicit priorities – how to stop the ‘tidal wave’ of Roma invading the West - did not dictate the terms of the debate, but became an object of analysis, something that needs to be scrutinised, and ultimately deconstructed. Why Roma mobility is perceived and constructed as a threat? Moreover, by distancing the analysis from the institutional/policy standpoint, it also enabled to see migration and mobility as engines of change and cultural cross-fertilisation, phenomena that have significantly changed over the last twenty years the demography of Romani communities in Europe. The conference was convened by Dr Nando Sigona and Professor Roger Zetter at the Refugee Studies Centre (University of Oxford) and generously supported by the John Fell Oxford University Press Fund and the ERSTE Foundation. The conference programme included three plenary sessions (now available in podcast), respectively on the Europeanisation of the Roma issue; migration, mobility and identity; and activism, advocacy and the politics of research, fifteen panels with over fifty speakers from eighteen different countries, a book launch, a Romani jazz band, and a keynote speech by Baroness Emma Nicholson of Winterbourne. This collection does not include the totality of the papers presented at the conference, as not all contributors submitted their written papers for publication. Oxford, 14 January 2010 4 Romani mobilities in Europe: Multidisciplinary perspectives International Conference, 14‐15 January 2010, University of Oxford T. Acton (University of Greenwich) Theorising mobility: Migration, nomadism, and the social reconstruction of ethnicity Email: [email protected] This paper seeks to show that a critical deconstruction of the concepts of nomadism and migration can expose the sleight of hand in the policy problematisation of nomadism and migration, and the confounding of the two phenomena which enables the stereotyping and scapegoating of nomads and migrants. If technological development is the motor of human progress, then migration constitutes the wheels, gears and steering of that motor. It has occurred since the very beginning of human history. All progress has been associated with setting up home in a new place; and all conservatism, and reactionary resistance to progress has involved replacing this real history with a myth that particular epiphenomenal human communities are indigenous in territories other than the Nile Valley, and are threatened by outsiders, territorial or social, who endanger their rulers’ control of the exploitation of local resources which they see as their primordial, natural, functional , God- given and scientifically demonstrable right. And so we have a world in which governments see migration as a problem, a cultural pathology, which has to be tamed, controlled and minimised., and calls popular racism into political support of such a policy (cf Castles and Davidson, 2000). My world view is different. I work on the premise that it is ideological justifications of the obstruction of the free movement of labour and capital that are the problem, not migration. I root my theoretical account of migration in the classical economic models, rather than the vacuous cultural studies which have usurped the place of the social sciences in the past two decades. I see culture as shaped by the twin material promptings of need and greed; I confess to being an unreconstructed dialectical materialist. When confronted by surprising human behaviour, I do not say ‘Ah, there must be some deep seated cultural virtus agendi at work!’; I ask the question ‘cui bono’. I do not deny the importance of culture, or that it has effects of its own; I simply insist that any cultural form, before it can be used as an explanation of anything, must first be an explicandum. I thus differentiate my position from the economic anthropology of the majority