Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

This chapter reveals the experiences of Roma from Serbia who sought and have been denied asylum protection in some EU countries. The seeking of asylum by the Roma from Serbia, as one of the main patterns of their migration, has come to the centre of debated about the rights of obtaining asylum within the existing EU asylum policies, while enforcing the discourse of “false asylum seekers” and “welfare migrants”. By revealing the complex reality within which Roma from Serbia choose to migrate in the form of asylum seeking, the study challenges the discourse of “false asylum seekers” and overcomes the simplification caused by this labelling, through looking at intricate relations between the decisions to seek asylum on the one hand and welfare benefits from getting into asylum procedure on the other. Furthermore, the study sheds light on various ways in which Roma asylum seekers from Serbia exert their power as social actors, thus contesting the tendency to “victimize” Roma populations. The study is based on several months of fieldwork carried out in three different municipalities in Serbia, with Roma whose asylum claims in countries of EU have been denied. This chapter aims to add to the analysis of how existing EU migration policies affect Roma populations by particularly focusing on actor perspective. It moves beyond theoretical analysis and looks at how social actors perceive their own experiences and understand the labels that are being imposed on them.

This chapter investigates the economic strategies of a group of Romanian Roma, who live in homelessness in Copenhagen. It draws on 13 months of anthropological fieldwork with Roma women and men who migrate continuously between Denmark and Romania and who mainly make a living by collecting refundable bottles and cans in Copenhagen. They refer to themselves as badocari , which translates to “bottle people” in Romanian. The chapter proposes the concept of “patchwork economy” to frame the micro economic strategies that the badocari engage in. The analogy of patchwork crafting serves to illustrate how the households’ economies rest upon a constant “stitching together” of various unreliable income sources that are scrap based and have no interconnection but due to their unreliability and minor revenue cannot stand alone to support the family. Furthermore, it illustrates how debt constitutes the background quilt against which the patchwork economy is continuously reconfigured. Finally, the chapter presents analytical insight into the interconnectedness between the micro economy of the Roma household and the broader social and political context of Romania and argues that the former should be regarded as a direct response to the latter.

Different public debates discuss the position of Roma in Europe as if they were one of the most mobile populations in Europe. The position of mobile Romani individuals became especially visible after the 2004 and 2007 European Union (EU) Enlargements. However, only a certain type of mobility of intra EU Romani migrants became particularly highlighted by the headlines of European Media: the one that more or less corresponded to a stereotypical image of a “Roma nomad” and depicted Roma as a potential threat to the social welfare systems of host states. This chapter argues that the reasons why Romani individuals become mobile are more complex and diverse than of those presented in the European public domain. The chapter traces life histories of Slovenian citizens who identify as Roma and have been mobile for work between Slovenia and Austria. It offers counter-narratives on how differing mobility practices of different Romani individuals are.