A
Gypsy camp in Trent, in northern Italy. |
Across Europe, Gypsies live in
dire poverty and are frequently the target of violence and racism. But some governments
are finally taking notice of the continent’s largest minority
 The figures are shocking. Between
60 and 80 per cent of Hungary’s working- age Roma are estimated to be unemployed.
More than 60 per cent of Romania’s Gypsies are said to live below the poverty line
and 80 per cent have no formal qualifications. In Bulgaria, the same percentage of
Gypsies living in cities are jobless. The figures are believed to be much higher
in the countryside.
In some villages of southern and eastern Slovakia, all Roma of adult age are destitute.
In Britain, an estimated 10 to 20 per cent of the “travellers,” as they are called,
live in absolute poverty. In some French cities, between 70 and 80 per cent of the
Gypsy population are on welfare payments paid out to the most destitute.
Their housing conditions are appalling, while their bill of health is another cause
for concern: most Roma have a life expectancy of under 50.
Valued
skills and masters of their own time
A glaring gap
separates Europe’s peoples from the continent’s largest minority. Why, despite repeated
attempts to assimilate or exclude the Gypsies over the past 600 years, have they
remained cut off from other peoples and for the most part, pushed to the fringes
of society? After all, not every group of people who came to live in Europe has been
systematically ostracised. The Hungarians were a nomadic people of Asian origin but
they managed to become a nation. And there are others.
Probably not all the Roma—who first came from India—were nomads when they arrived
in the Byzantine Empire in the 12th or 13th century. But as far as we can tell from
various writings, they had talents that enabled them to participate in the economies
of the regions they crossed. They had no ambitions to conquer, but wherever they
went, presented themselves as craftspeople, artists and traders. They were independent
workers, committed to being masters of their own time, intent on making an earning
from odd, on-the-spot jobs and with enough skills to meet the requests and needs
of a dispersed clientele.
Many Europeans no doubt frowned upon the Gypsies’ working habits: how they sought
out jobs each day, their trust in luck, their spontaneous way of approaching strangers
and their persistence. It set them apart from farming communities who worked for
the long term, in tune with the changing seasons. Despite this and the inevitable
friction between people from different backgrounds, nomads and farmers needed each
other. The nomads provided
tools, baskets, veterinary care, music or temporary manpower to the farmers, who
gave them food and other goods in exchange.
For a long time, the Roma managed to make a living in this way, mainly as itinerants
but also by staying in one place when there were opportunities. There were plenty
of such cases in the Ottoman Empire and in central Europe, where the Roma served
in the armies of invaders. They were also active in the Iberian peninsula, where
they took over from the Moors and Jews expelled towards the end of the 15th century,
at the time of the Reconquista, until they too were forced out.
These few examples go to show that Gypsies were not excluded because of a deep-rooted
failure to adjust to local
economic conditions, as it is too often suggested. Rather, it seems clear that governments
and officials—first in western Europe, especially Spain, and then in central and
eastern Europe—have, over the centuries, gone to great lengths to portray the Roma
as a foreign and anti-social people without a culture of their own.
The contrived image of the Gypsies as an idle, roaming and dangerous people was one
of the devices—along with violence, coercion and ideology—that was used to help forge
the national identity of peoples belonging to specific territories with well-guarded
borders. In the 19th century, when these peoples rose up against foreign rulers,
the nationalist struggle was always on behalf of a single majority people, whose
sturdy peasant values were often played up, to the detriment of all other elements
in society, including the Roma.
The influence of this past on forging a common identity as an excluded people cannot
be underestimated. The nomads of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for example, settled
in the 18th century as “new peasants,” but were not given any land. It contributed
to a culture of mistrust and resistance towards gadjes (non-Gypsies).
Even though the Gypsies had been the long-time economic and cultural partners of
European peoples, they were always kept out of political decision-making, though
it can be questioned whether they were interested in becoming involved at this level.
At best they were regarded as juniors to be dominated, at worst troublemakers to
be pushed aside. Some closed off from the world and scratched a living on the edge
of gadjo society, while others took another path, making contact with non-Gypsies
as best they could.
In the process, some collective traits of the Roma—wariness of the outside world,
the tendency to mix with one’s own and a fatalistic attitude towards events—became
accentuated and encouraged their separation from other peoples.
Mutual
distrust
Children were
understandably taught to be weary of the gadjes. Their education was geared at following
in their parent’s footsteps and focused on the practical, with their environment
serving as the starting point for learning.
The tendency to exclude Gypsies grew steadily throughout the 20th century. Police
in western Europe cracked down on them with increasing harshness. These days, Gypsies
are confined to a limited number of parking plots and camping grounds that are often
ill-equipped for the needs of travelling families.
The growth of market forces and changes in consumer tastes, along with newer, more
sophisticated production methods, have helped to drive some Gypsy communities deeper
into poverty. Their trading practices are restricted by laws against selling door-to-door,
against street activities and against recuperating objects from dumps. Such legislation
takes absolutely no account of their skills, nor of the stakes at hand for Roma in
this domain. If they had no access to social assistance or credit (although the public
image of Roma is hardly conducive to respect), many would find themselves in desperate
situations.
Targets
of violence in eastern Europe
Under communism
in central and eastern Europe, Roma were first seen as a social aberration, a relic
of the “bourgeois” world that would eventually disappear. The Gypsies were shipped
en masse to work in menial jobs on collective farms and in state enterprises. The
lack of political attention to the Roma’s culture—their ancestral language, their
education geared to sharing and their economic flexibility stressing income from
odd jobs—and the crying indifference to the xenophobia that developed towards them,
did not facilitate the assimilation of young Gypsies into the socialist societies.
The collapse of communism in eastern Europe brought great suffering and violence
to the Roma, whose neighbourhoods have been repeatedly attacked by skinheads and
others. In Bosnia and more recently in Kosovo, Gypsy communities were even destroyed.
Unemployment among them has further increased.
In a sense, this new marginalisation, which has produced emigration movements towards
a utopian El Dorado (namely western Europe), is simply another consequence of the
political and nationalist attitudes that have harmed the Gypsies time and time again
in the past. Gypsies often have little lifeline outside their communities, which
are refused any territorial rights by the host societies. They are often prevented
from settling in a region that seems more hospitable because they are ill-equipped
to cope with the demands of today’s economy and lack a decent level of education.
Recognizing
national minorities
The Roma have
nonetheless made a few significant strides in recent years. Several international
bodies and many NGOs have taken up their cause and have pushed programmes to foster
their integration—both economically and socially. Governments are finally recognizing
them as national minorities or are taking measures to encourage their development
in the longer term.
Not all Roma have had their spirit broken by centuries of being shunned. Some have
adapted, occasionally by assimilating but more often by highlighting their traditional
know-how and showing a willingness to become involved in the host society.
The future of the Roma probably does not depend on a single solution. Given the problems
and obstacles they face, it is more than ever linked to a collective determination
to build a humane and democratic society where individuals and groups can blossom
and flourish.
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