Residual People, Residual Spaces
Framing Roma (Social) Housing Exclusion in Light of the Housing Regime
Livia Del Duca
Urban Studies Two-year Master 30 credits
Spring semester, 2021 Supervisor: Martin Grander
Table of contents
Abstract 2
1. Introduction 3
1.1Research question and aim 6
1.2 Structure of the thesis 7
Part I
2. Methodology 8
2.1 A theoretical perspective on discourse 8
2.2 What is a discourse analysis? 9
2.3 How is a discourse analysis developed? 9
3. Conceptual Framework 10
3.1 Framing social exclusion 10
3.2 Conceptualizing housing regimes 13
3.3 Housing exclusion as social exclusion? 15
Part II
4. The Roma in Italy: historical perspectives 16
4.1 The importance of being (called) Roma 16
4.2 Who are the Roma in Italy? 17
4.3 The legal status of Roma in Italy 19
5. The dimensions of Roma’s social exclusion 19
5.1 Health 20
5.2 Education 21
5.3 Employment 22
6. Housing exclusion of the Roma 22
6.1 “Campland” Italy 23
6.2 “Safeguarding nomadic culture”: The inception of camps 24
6.3 The “Nomad Emergency”: criminalising discourse 26
7. Housing in Italy: a permanent crisis 27
7.1 The housing regime 28
7.2 The camps before the camps 30
7.3 Temporality as a solution 32
8. All roads lead to Rome: testing grounds for social exclusion 33 8.1 The ‘Piano di Inclusione’: good intentions, bad execution 35 8.2 Public housing: Double standards or silver lining? 36
Conclusion 39
References 41
Abstract
Italy is the only country in Europe that has institutionalized a completely parallel and segregating housing system - the camp system for Roma people. These camps were created purely based on an elusive nomadic character innate to the population. Over the decades, with further migratory flows of Roma people reaching the country, conditions have only worsened, developing a system so much tethered to the Italian society that the country has even been renamed ‘Campland’. Over time, this same exclusion has been problematized, resulting in the criminalisation of Roma people, at the same time bringing to light the exceptionality of their living conditions. The first part of this study is devoted to understanding the process of discursive legitimization of said exclusion. The approach, inspired by a Foucaldian understanding, involved also grasping the dialectical relationship between discourse and social structures (Fairclough, 1992) - in this sense, it entailed situating it outside its boundaries of exceptionality and inside the broader context of wider housing exclusion affecting Italy. The aim of this thesis was thus to reconstruct both the specific condition of Roma exclusion, and the structural inequalities innate to the Italian housing regime which enabled its development. The concept of social exclusion (Levitas et al, 2007) is implemented in the study first as a way to understand the overall condition faced by Roma people, and as a way to bring forward reflections on the role of housing as one of its fundamental dimensions.
The study illustrates how the implementation of the camps and its relative discourse were enabled by the constant retreat of the State from the provision of housing, and how the current institutional incapacity to solve the Roma Question is directly connected to the inability to answer the housing needs of wider segments of the population. The only proposed institutional responses, in both cases, are only ‘filler’ solutions embedded in ideas of temporality, thus failing to address the underlying problem: the structural shortage of public housing.
Keywords: Social Exclusion, Housing Exclusion, Housing Regime, Roma, Italy, Urban Policy, Discourse Analysis
Acknowledgements
I would first like to thank Martin Grander, who has been my supervisor for this research project. His advice has been of great value, as well as his support through the whole process.
I would also like to thank all the professors who have guided me during those two years, their knowledge has been invaluable.
A great “Thank You!” goes to all my friends in Malmö. Their presence and support through these months has been essential. They were there when I needed to discuss all the challenges, complaints, and struggles I faced during those months, but also when I was in need of a distraction. Those two years have been possible thanks to their presence.
There is a special group of people I would like to thank: Angelica, Maria, John, Martina, Gloria. I am so grateful for your friendship, even though we are always so far away from each other. In particular, Gloria: we’ve known each other for twenty years and you have always been the greatest of friends - I keep asking myself how you can still put up with me after all this time!
Finally, I would also like to thank my family. Their love over the years has allowed me to go through this journey. Papà, thank you for your constant support, and for being my unofficial supervisor! Mamma, thank you for always believing in me. And, last but not least, I have to thank my sister Fulvia - we are each other’s biggest supporters, and with her intelligence and hard work over the years, she has always been my inspiration.
1. Introduction
“Rome is becoming a horrible city [...]: on the old borgate that survived like an indelible dream-city, archaic, new peripheral layers arise, even more horrendous, if possible. This is
the spectacle that appears before my eyes every day. You know very well that your “well being” [...] implies “malaise”. [...] I am in the position to only perceive this regress: it’s the
impoverishment of Italy that is, for me, relevant.”
(Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1963)1
With these words, during an interview, writer Pier Paolo Pasolini described Rome, a city caught between two realities - one of expansion and prosperity, and a remote one, cut out from these social improvements, consigned to the outskirts of the city, hidden, which found its ultimate expression through the proletarian neighborhoods of the time, the borgate. Two faces of social and economic “development”, two faces that the city, as the years went by, tried to forget, but which still exist to this day, under different forms. The city of Rome is here taken both for its peculiarities and as the general expression of an Italian malaise, which leaves in a sort of limbo of social segregation an increasingly large part of its population. In this thesis, an emblematic expression of this social malaise is encapsulated by the condition of housing exclusion, and on wider terms, social exclusion, Roma people face on the Italian territory.
The man regarded as the father of modern criminology, Cesare Lombroso, cataloged all those he defined as “gypsies” as a “whole race of criminals”2. The idea that people considered gypsies were ethnically inferior and devoted to the most basic human instincts did not disappear with the passage of time, if anything it grew stronger - we need only think of what happened in the concentration camps during nazism (Di Noia, 2016). In other instances, more recently, this idea lurked behind several national rhetorics, turning into a belief, a conviction, hidden in the (European) man towards Roma people. The history of the Roma present on the Italian territory is the emblematic manifestation of the criminal, vile consideration reserved to the Other.
Roma people are around 0.23% - 0.28% of the total Italian population (CoE, 2011; UNAR, 2012), while the legal condition of the Roma present on the Italian territory is extremely varied: it is estimated that at least 60% has Italian citizenship (Sigona, 2005), while the remaining 40% is composed of EU citizens (coming mainly from Romania), non-EU citizens (coming from the Balkan countries), and those that are apolidi, that is, people without any citizenship, born in nations no longer existing - this is the condition of many Roma coming from former Yugoslavia. It has been widely acknowledged how Roma populations in Italy live in a persistent and heavy condition of marginalization and poverty, which translates into a constant condition of social exclusion; and how they are in real terms subjected to
2These considerations can be found in the book The criminal man (‘L'uomo delinquente’), first published in italian in 1878.
1This is an excerpt from an interview included in Sessanta posizioni (Alberto Arbasino, 1971).
discrimination and racism, also on a structural level. Under this condition of social exclusion, multiple dimensions actively interact in its formation. The multidimensionality of the concept (Levitas, 2005; Levitas et al., 2007; Millar, 2007; Madanipour et al., 2015) is reflected in the various dimensions of inequality and exclusion, which are translated into labor, economic, health, educational, and housing inequality, following the dimensions identified by the European Commission in the National Roma Integration Strategy (EC, 2011). The extremely heavy conditions of housing inequality to which they are subjected can be considered as the cornerstone of the Roma marginalization, the principal instrument which separates, discriminates, and limits the living conditions of a part of the population. Housing is thus only one dimension in the multidimensionality of social exclusion, but an extremely important one.
The housing exclusion of Roma people is a contemporary expression of a history of exclusion that even today can be found under different forms. It is the exclusion of a housing regime structurally incapable of finding a new vision, and which is falling towards wider conditions of housing deprivation which is affecting an increasing part of the population. The Italian housing regime is characterized by a system of public housing provision which is extremely residualistic, and it is rooted in a tradition mainly directed towards homeownership. The process of legitimation which led to the creation of a “nation of homeowners” (Di Feliciantonio & Aalbers, 2018) is long and spread out over time, often used as an instrument to gain political consensus and which has led to the almost total defunding of the public housing sector. The familiaristic aspect of the Italian housing regime (Allen, 2006), deriving from a traditionally low welfare provision, makes access to housing not easily open to outsiders.
In this context of housing exclusion comes into play what is, to all intent and purposes, a completely separate housing system: that is, the camp system for Roma and Sinti people. The so-called campi rom, Roma camps, were first created during the late 1980s - 1990s to accommodate people of the Roma communities, purely (as it was said) on the basis of an elusive nomadic character innate to the population (Clough Marinaro and Sigona, 2011).
These camps are, specifically, settlements created with containers, shackles, cabins, where Roma people who can’t afford a different housing solution have been forced into. For decades, politics on both national and local levels answered the housing question of the Roma by creating and pursuing this system, which is one of the main elements contributing to the social exclusion of the Roma (Associazione 21 Luglio, 2019). This camp system is so much tethered to the Italian society that the country has been renamed ‘Campland’ in a report by the European Roma Rights Center (ERRC, 2000). According to Maestri and Vitale (2017), there are at least 40’000 people who, to this day, live in the camps - which can either be authorized ones or illegal ones, with terrible hygienic conditions and in a condition of profound social and urban segregation, often located in the fringes of cities. Central to this nomadic vision of the Roma was therefore the creation of the camps, initially conceived as temporary structures for a population that, according to the general discourse, did not want to have a stable home.
The period of development of the camps coincides with the crystallization of the so-called Nomad Emergency or Roma Question in Italy. It is from the 90s onwards that new migratory flows from Yugoslavia brought new groups of Roma into the national territory. It is especially in the second half of the 2000s, however, that the situation became extremely dire. The year that is considered to be the moment of definite crystallization of the figure of the Roma as a public enemy in the popular imagination is that of 2007-2008 (Armillei, 2017; Clough Marinaro & Daniele, 2011; Clough Marinaro and Sigona, 2011), when a series of highly publicized criminal events in connection to Roma people took place. These events became the catalyst for the reinforcement of an emergency discourse in regards to the Roma, which culminated with the Prime Minister’s Decree (at the time Silvio Berlusconi), on the 21st May 2008, which declared:
“The Prime Minister [...] decrees [...] the state of emergency in relation to the settlements of nomadic communities in the territory of the Campania, Lombardy, and Lazio regions”
(DPCM May 21, 2008)
The segregation of the Roma certainly did not begin only in 2007. What took place instead, at the level of public opinion, was the stabilization of the criminalizing perception of the Roma, and the political strengthening of segregating policies. Special security powers were granted to Security Commissioners in Rome, Milan, and Naples (Clough Marinaro, 2009), such as increasing security and police presence in the camps, and the census of all Roma people in the cities, collecting fingerprints, photos, and documents, even of minors (Clough Marinaro, and Sigona, 2011). But, as previously mentioned, the treatment of Roma as separate entities from the rest of the Italian context has more distant origins than in recent 2007.
Scholars in Italy have mainly analyzed the development of the camps at different national (Sigona, 2005, 2011) or local levels - for example, Clough Marinaro regarding Rome (Clough Marinaro, 2003, 2014; Clough Marinaro and Daniele, 2011). The focus of academic research has mainly been on the institution of the camp per se, reconnecting it to Agamben’s state of exception and often viewing Roma as homo sacer, bare life stripped of their citizenship rights and banished from the community (Armillei, 2015; Clough Marinaro, 2009, 2015; Clough Marinaro and Bermann, 2011). Sigona (2015) expanded Agamben’s conceptualization of bare life to the concept of ‘campzenship’, the specific condition of citizenship derived from the camps. In regards to the Roma and wider housing processes, Maestri (2014) integrated the perspective of Roma in the camps with the squatting movement in Rome, studying the integration of a few Roma people in the famous Metropoliz squat in the city. The focus has thus mainly been on the discriminating conditions in the camps, often leaving a gap in the connection with the wider context of housing deprivation, and on the implications of this structural deprivation in the outcome of housing exclusion for the Roma.
Retracing back to the statement previously made, that Roma people are inserted in a multidimensional system of social exclusion, the purpose of this research thesis is to analyze the process of legitimation of a given discourse based on housing exclusion, as a specter of a broader condition of social exclusion. A condition that has been implemented over the years,
at a national and local level. What I was interested in analyzing, was not only comprehending the exceptional character of the condition of segregation for Roma people - which is indeed exceptional, both when confronted with other European countries (Italy is the only country in Europe which has institutionalized this camp system [ERRC, 2000]) and when seen in the Italian landscape; but at the same time the non-exceptional nature of this segregation itself, understood as an integral and historical part of the Italian housing system.
1.1Research question and aim
The condition of social exclusion is therefore understood as the result of a specific discourse, carried out at the political and social level, and a corresponding process of problematization, leading to (and being aided by) segregating and discriminating policies. The first step is to observe how “things come to be” (Bacchi, 2012:7) - in this case, how the housing exclusion of the Roma has developed through the use of a specific discourse, aided by the structural lack of social support of the Italian welfare state. As Di Noia pointed out (2016:45), “the Italian population, made increasingly socially insecure by structural elements such as the world economic crisis, the unemployment crisis, the progressive cut in social policies, was offered a scapegoat that bordered on perfection: the immigrant Roma”. Analyzing and framing the discursive development in regards to Roma’s housing exclusion is taken as the starting point to then frame this exclusion under the broader context of the Italian housing regime.
What has been framed as a specific, exceptional, and emergency situation (an emergency that has been going on for over 30 years), is nothing of the sort: not only because it is not acceptable to single out one specific group as deviant and in need of an emergency approach, but also because the same mentality and often the same kind of response is used in the broader housing context. An approach constantly driven by emergencies and ad hoc policies, which are always temporary but more often than not end up becoming permanent. The second step, and purpose of this thesis, is to analyze the underlying conditions of segregation as the natural progression of an increasingly inaccessible housing regime - the Roma are indeed a residual population in a residual space, as Sibley (1995:68) described them, and may I add, in a residual housing regime.
This research project will then try to answer the following research questions:
(a) How can Roma’s social (housing) exclusion be framed in the wider context of the Italian housing regime?
And, in order to understand this;
(b) How has this exclusion been framed and problematized on a national and local level?
The study will thus have a double focus: an analysis of the discursive framing regarding Roma people and their housing conditions will be implemented in order to understand how the current, segregating housing system has been informed by specific narratives which have singled it out as an exception; and a broader comparison with the wider housing regime in order to understand the deeper structural causes of it. Thus, the method of discourse analysis will be implemented, following a Foucauldian approach centered on understanding the historical and social development of a said regime of truth (Foucault, 1980), while the condition of Roma people will be analysed under the lens of social/housing exclusion and its connection with the housing regime.
1.2 Structure of the thesis
In order to implement the proposed analysis, the thesis will be structured as follows:
The first part of the thesis will be focused on describing, in the first chapter, the methodology used to carry out the research - that is, discourse analysis. Reflections on what a discourse analysis is will be brought forward, as well as the more technical aspects of using such a method, while also discussing the broader theoretical framework surrounding the chosen method. The second chapter will delve deeper into the theoretical development of some particular concepts used in the research - the concept of social exclusion and of housing regime.
The second part of the thesis will be reserved for the study of Roma housing (and broader social) exclusion in Italy. In this section, the fourth chapter develops the historical framing of the Roma presence in Italy, discussing also the implications of the use of a specific terminology with respect to Roma people. The fifth chapter frames the multidimensionality of Roma social exclusion, looking at the health, education, and employment dimensions, while the sixth chapter delves deeper into the housing dimension. In the chapter, it is analyzed the development of policies and discourse from the ‘inception’ of the camps up to this day, at a national level. Chapter seven will instead focus on the broader perspective of the Italian housing regime, highlighting first the key features of the housing regime, and then the presence of the camps before the institutionalization, and the issue of temporality, here presented as a key aspect in the institutional response to housing distress. Chapter eight brings forward the case of Rome. The situation is analyzed by first presenting the political response to the Roma presence in the city; then the latest policy action undertaken by the mayoralty; and finally the issues connected with accessing public housing. The final chapter will provide a discussion regarding the data provided, bringing forward reflections in regards to the research questions.
Part I
2. Methodology
The purpose of this chapter is to develop and explain the method employed in the research in order to understand how Roma’s exclusion/inclusion from housing has been framed on a policy-governmentality level, in light of a context of growing housing exclusion in the Italian housing regime. To carry out this study, the chosen method has been that of discourse analysis. But why a discourse analysis, and most importantly, what is a discourse analysis?
2.1 A theoretical perspective on discourse
At the heart of a discourse analysis lies, arguably so, the understanding of a certain discourse.
But this understanding is shaped by many different factors - how discourse is created, how it needs to be analyzed, and most importantly, what discourse is. Understanding what discourse is and what this term encompasses is the first step towards developing the analytical framework. Fairclough describes “discursive practices” as the “production, distribution, and consumption of texts” (1992:71). There is already a shift from discourse to the practice of discourse - Bacchi and Bonham (2014) highlight how it would be more correct to speak of discursive practices instead of discourse itself: the attention must be placed on the fact that discourse, understood in the Foucauldian sense, is not the practice of discourse, the act of speaking or writing, but a set of practices that include but are not limited to the use of language.
It is important to highlight the dialectical relationship between discourse and social structures (Fairclough, 1992) - stemming from Foucalt’s understanding (1980), discourse is actively shaped and constrained by societal dimensions, i.e. class, laws, institutions, norms; but at the same time has an active role in constituting those same dimensions. Thus, discursive practices and social practices must be seen as part of the same system constructing meanings (Fairclough, 1992).
The theoretical framework employed in this thesis thus follows Foucault’s poststructuralist understanding of the world, believing in the dialectical relationship between power and discourse, and in the necessity of framing the “socially and historically conditioned context”
(Flyvbjerg & Richardson, 2002:10). The concept of discourse in this thesis is therefore understood as the socio-historically conditioned system that produces knowledge and meaning and, thus power (Foucault, 1980; Bacchi & Bonham, 2014) - rather than only language per se. By connecting the meaning of discourse with knowledge rather than with language itself, there is a shift from the meaning of (linguistic) statements and speeches, towards the process that led to the formation of said statements (knowledge).
2.2 What is a discourse analysis?
Michel Foucault’s work has been regarded as one of the most popular approaches towards a discourse analysis methodology (Fairclough, 1992). Lees (2004) singled out two main
schools of thought regarding discourse analysis, with the main difference being the epistemological framework they draw from. One originating from a Marxist and Gramscian tradition embedded in political economy studies, and a second one entrenched in a poststructural sensibility, whose main theorist can be identified in Foucault, Derrida, Lacan.
The former focuses on the role of ideology in concealing the hegemonic interests of powerful elites - Lees (2004) notes how under this understanding, discourse is almost synonymous with ideology itself” (p.102). The analytical method she connects with this framework is Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis - CDA (Fairclough, 1989, 1995[2010], 2013). This method of analysis is entrenched in a “critical realist approach” (Fairclough, 2010:4), which theories the existence of a real world existing “irrespectively of whether or how well we understand it” (p.4). Thus the study of language focuses on linguistic and structural features of texts in order to investigate “the relations of language to other social processes, and of how language works within power relations” [original emphasis] (Taylor, 2004:436). CDA is then a systematic analysis that aims to understand “how practices, events and texts arise out of and are ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggles over power” (Fairclough, 2010 [1995]:132).
The latter theoretical strand is instead entrenched in a poststructuralist sensibility, recognizing that “there can be no universal truths or absolute ethical positions” (Graham, 2011:666), but rather that different discourses have the capacity of creating regimes of truth (Foucault 1980).
Analyzing language does not only mean uncovering the hegemonic ideology behind power relations but also developing an understanding that language itself is a vehicle in the creation of meanings and in shaping power relations (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002). Under this analytical framework, discourse becomes the conjunction between language, power relations, and knowledge (Lees, 2004). A discourse analysis embedded in a poststructuralist-Foucauldian understanding of reality ultimately sees power as a network of relations, of which language and discourse are part. This viewpoint has often a historical focus, analyzing how certain regimes of truth have come to be in the social, political, cultural contexts in which they are embedded. As Graham (2011) points out, in a Foucauldian discourse analysis the first step is that of recognition, meaning “tracing the process involved in their constitution” (p.670).
2.3 How is a discourse analysis developed?
As far as analytical methods go, a discourse analysis following a Foucauldian approach is uncharacteristically abstract and un-methodological. This abstract characteristic has been criticized - Fairclough (1992) stated that it is not really possible to implement a discourse analysis using Foucault, instead, it concerns more ‘putting Foucault’s perspective into work’
(p.38) by using more analytically-developed research methods, such as CDA. It is indeed true that Foucault’s analysis is extremely vague and often not exactly concerned with the specific analysis of spoken and written language (Fairclough, 1992) - it is also true that researchers should avoid the “positivist trap of essentializing the research method” (Graham, 2005:5), pairing their work with an understanding that the analytical process, being essentially based
on the subjective interpretation of the author, will rarely produce the same results (Graham, 2005).
However, researchers have tried to formulate more developed methodologies of poststructuralist discourse analysis, as is the case of Carol Bacchi’s (2009) WPR approach (What’s the Problem Represented to be?), which looks specifically at policy discourse analysis, by formulating a set of six questions that need to be answered while analyzing a specific policy. Her conceptualization of the method stems from the understanding that when policies explicitly (or not) deal with certain problems, they contribute to the formation of said problems in a dialectical relationship by emphasizing what needs to be fixed in a determined system (Bacchi, 2009). While Bacchi’s methodological approach will not be used in this research, her method of understanding which are the elements that are identified as the problems, in order to fully comprehend the discursive practices and how they translate into policy development, will be part of the analytical framework in this thesis. Foucault looks at problematizations as the social and historical process which produces ‘objects of thought’
(Bacchi, 2012:1) - in order to understand ‘how and why certain things (behavior, phenomena, processes) become a problem’ (Foucault, 1985:115, as cited in Bacchi, 2012:1). The shaping of problems is a production of meanings, of implicit truths that innately guide governing practices. Problematization as a method relates to what Foucault calls ‘thinking problematically’ (Foucault, 1977, as cited in Bacchi, 2012:1) - it is the method of analysis that involves the study of certain objects of thought that have been problematized over the years through the analysis of the historical process which led to their production. When it comes down to it, studying problematizations entails critically understanding the role policies play in shaping and developing the very same problems they claim to be fighting.
3. Conceptual Framework
This chapter outlines the theoretical framework underlying the analysis presented in the thesis. The first paragraph defines the concept of social exclusion, used to frame the condition of structural marginality related to Roma people. By discussing the multidimensionality of social exclusion, the concept of housing exclusion will be brought forward, along with the conceptualization of housing regimes in order to develop an understanding of the specific system of housing provision brought into the future analysis.
3.1 Framing social exclusion
The concept of social exclusion is still relatively recent in academic and policy environments.
The term was first traced back to René Lenoir (1974), the then Secretary of State for Social Action of the Chirac government during the 1970s. It was initially used to describe as socially excluded those outside the social security system and, in many cases, the labor market. Those individuals were recognized as the mentally and physically disabled, substance abusers, suicidal people, abused children, single parents, or people with antisocial behaviors - and they were all grouped together under the term of “exclu”, outcasts (Sen, 2000; Davies, 2005). At first, social exclusion was considered mainly in terms of exclusion from the labor market and as a consequence and extension of poverty (Levitas, 1996), but it then evolved to be
specifically distinct from that of poverty, and the idea in the policy environment shifted from overcoming poverty to overcoming social exclusion. The boundaries between poverty and social exclusion are somewhat still blurred, mainly because both concepts can be formulated in a vague and somewhat unclear manner.
Jehoel-Gijsbers and Vrooman (2007) trace the difference between poverty and social exclusion to two schools of thought: the French school, which builds on social exclusion, inspired by a Durkheimian tradition looking at social cohesion and integration; and the Anglo-American school, with a more scientific approach to access to income, basic goods, and relative deprivation in general. They then develop a comparison between poverty and social exclusion, noting how the former is a static condition relating to (generally) a determined income at a moment in time, and the latter is instead a dynamic process, which looks at the causes of exclusion. They also note that while poverty is unidimensional, related to the financial resources and material goods possessed by an individual, social exclusion is instead multidimensional - connected to a wider set of domains, pertaining from material/economic resources to social resources, cultural participation, access to services, civic participation and others. Finally, they highlight how poverty has a distributional character, while social exclusion has a relational one, concerning relations between different societal, cultural, and political domains. Levitas (2005) has identified one of the ‘discourses of social exclusion’ as the redistributionist discourse (RED), in which the primary cause of social exclusion is identified as poverty. While poverty seems to be a more limited and narrow concept, it is also easier to observe and identify, since the lack of economic and financial resources has a more ‘objective’ connotation - the concept of social exclusion is vaguer and it has been noted by scholars how it ‘suffers from a lack of clarity’ (Madanipour, 2011:188).
Walker and Walker (1997, cited in Byrne, 2005), aptly distinguish social exclusion from poverty: “We have retained the distinction regarding poverty as a lack of the material resources, especially income, necessary to participate in society, and social exclusion as a more comprehensive formulation which refers to the dynamic process of being shut out, fully or partially, from any of the social, economic, political or cultural systems which determine the social integration of a person in society. Social exclusion may therefore be seen as the denial (or non-realization) of the civil, political, and social rights of citizenship” (1997:8). If social exclusion can be understood in the first place as the ‘multidimensional conception of disadvantage’ (Silver, 2007:15), poverty can be regarded as one dimension of social exclusion, but not a necessary aspect of it. Social exclusion overcomes the material dimension of poverty - it is not only the lack of economic resources but a process whereby certain individuals and/or groups become excluded. But what does excluded even mean? This exclusion is mainly understood as the lack of access to social opportunity (Sen, 2000), or as
‘the inability to participate when the individual would like to do so’ (Levitas et al., 2007:22), or as ‘[the] institutionalized form of controlling access: to places, to activities, to resources and information’ (Madanipour, 2011:189). Scholars working on social exclusion theory have thus emphasized the aspect of participation in relation to social exclusion/inclusion. Levitas et al. (2007) define social exclusion as ‘a complex and multi-dimensional process. It involves
the lack or denial of resources, rights, goods, and services, and the inability to participate [author’s emphasis] in the normal relationships and activities, available to the majority of people in a society, whether in economic, social, cultural or political arenas. It affects both the quality of life of individuals and the equity and cohesion of society as a whole.’ (p.18).
Specifically stressing the aspect of inability to participate is extremely important. Davey and Gordon (2017) also reflect on the fact that it is not the lack of participation per sé that should be taken as a ‘symptom’, an expression of social exclusion, and stress towards a more nuanced definition of participation/non-participation. Non-participation in society can also be a choice of an individual who could, if they wanted to, actually participate, but for some reason chose not to. At the same time, non-participation can also be the outcome for individuals or groups who do want to participate but are incapacitated from doing so.
Important is then the question of whether or not the opportunity to participate is actually available to those considered socially excluded - not whether they decide to do it. It is important to eliminate, on socially excluded groups or individuals, the blame for their own exclusion. But while the main aspect is the lack of access - it is still vague what it is that people are excluded from. On an abstract level, the addition of the term ‘social’ to exclusion easily connects the term to societal aspects, mainly related to vague concepts of citizenship (Sommerville, 1998; Madanipour et al., 2015). Levitas et al. (2007) describe the main domains of social exclusion as ‘access by all to resources, rights, goods and services’ (p. 86), divided into social resources, material/economic resources and public/private services; then
‘participation in economic, social and cultural life’ (p. 75); and quality of life.
There is a general consensus among scholars (Levitas, 2005; Levitas et al., 2007; Millar, 2007; Madanipour et al., 2015) on a number of key characteristics that define social exclusion. Firstly, the nature of social exclusion is multidimensional, as stated in Levitas et al.’s definition (2007). This multidimensionality means that there is a plurality of factors that influence social exclusion and inequality to different degrees. It is dynamic, since future prospects and opportunities need to be factored in, as well as considering the dynamic role social and institutional processes have in shaping social exclusion. It is relational, since it focuses on the relation between the included and the excluded at different levels. And finally, it is contextual - the concept of social exclusion, with its multidimensionality and dynamisms, differs according to the specific social and economic context in which it is analyzed. Taking into consideration that there are different dimensions influencing social exclusion means understanding that there are many different sources that cause, or could potentially cause, social deprivation - not all of the sources and processes are always activated at the same time, or in different places. Different processes can be the cause of social exclusion, depending on which context (and which social group) is analyzed. The key to understanding social exclusion is to refer to the structural character of it, in relation to wider social, economic, cultural processes related to a specific system. According to Madanipour (2011), it is institutionalized exclusion that becomes an operating mechanism by controlling access to resources. As it is important to refer to the characteristics of a specific society, it is also important to refer to the experiences of individuals situated within these (Levitas et al., 2007:21). As long as the power of social, political, and cultural institutions goes, the social exclusion could be regarded as an ‘exercise in normative boundary setting’ (Cameron,
2006:401), an expression of sovereign power defining the included as the ‘normal’, (and therefore acceptable) part of society, and the excluded as the abnormal. Thus while developing this study on the concept of social exclusion, one should keep in mind how the use of the term itself on determined individuals or groups implies the application of a certain narrative, which is inevitably embedded in the intrinsic power relations of society, and an expression of it. It is the power of deciding who is excluded - the power of the ‘included’ to identify the ‘excluded’ and to impress determined (usually negative) characters upon them.
This relates to one of the ‘social exclusion discourses’ identified by Levitas (2005), the moral underclass discourse (MUD). The narrative of social exclusion is brought forward by conceptualizing the excluded as the counter-image of the included, thus lacking the (assumed) positive characteristics intrinsic to those included in society (which could be morality, competitiveness in the labor market, responsibility). According to the MUD discourse, the focus is on the behavior and the characteristics of those who are ‘excluded’, as alleged failings and deficiencies are imputable to them. Exclusion thus becomes attributed to cultural characteristics of the excluded as society’s outsiders, since power relations shape the general imagery - the focus can be shifted to alleged cultural and moral shortcomings intrinsic to socially deprived groups in our societies. In her identification of different discourses inside British politics, in the MUD discourse, the solution proposed is often to apply stricter criteria to access and maintain welfare benefits. In understanding the structural societal processes causing exclusion, the welfare regimes and its various institutions gain an important role as one of the structural pillars of society’s organization.
3.2 Conceptualizing housing regimes
The theoretical formulation of housing regimes takes as a starting point (although with consistent later departures) Esping-Andersen’s theory of welfare state regimes, developed in the 1990s mainly through his seminal publication The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990). The idea of welfare regime per se was a multi-dimensional type of classification of different interrelationships between the three main social institutions: the family, the market, and the State. The ‘Three Worlds’ in the title correspond to the three different welfare state regimes which emerge from Esping-Andersen’s analysis:
1. The liberal welfare state regime, characterized by an extremely selective and residualist provision of social services and a high reliance on market principles;
2. The social-democratic welfare state regime, characterized instead by a universalistic approach to welfare provision to the whole population, and thus low differences in terms of accessibility to services;
3. The conservative-corporatist welfare state regime, in which welfare provision can still be regarded as fairly high, but without the strong re-distributive approach that characterizes social-democratic regimes. There is a different grade of accessibility to services, mainly based on class/gender differences. It must also be noted how in a corporatist regime the State is often not the only provider of services: family and other institutions have a much similar (if not bigger in some cases) role. In his analysis,
Italy (the only Southern European country part of his study) was regarded as a corporatist regime.
Esping-Andersen developed his theory by analyzing mainly the relationships between State’s social policies and labor market arrangements while neglecting the institution of the family and informal labor. Later debates have criticized this shortcoming, arguing on the existence of additional types of welfare regimes - mainly a Central-Eastern European and a Southern European/Mediterranean welfare regime (Castles and Ferrera, 1996; Allen, 2006). The position of housing inside welfare regime theory has always been blurry and subject of discussion - mainly because housing was not really a topic of consideration in Esping-Andersen’s development of welfare regime theory (Stephens, 2016). Famously, Kemeny (1992, 2001, 2006) developed a housing regime theory, considering housing as a pillar of the welfare state along with social assistance, health, and education - even if more related to the market than the others. Kemeny argues that the organization of the rental housing sector is the main parameter that differentiates housing regimes. He identifies a dualist rental system (mainly in Anglo-Saxon countries), in which there is a clear separation between the private rental market and the social rented sector, reserved for low-income households; and the unitary rental system (countries like Sweden and The Netherlands are an example), in which the social rented sector plays a bigger role in housing provision and is put on an equal footing with the private market, often in direct competition with it (Kemeny, 2006; Hoekstra, 2009). Stephens (2020) formulates a critique of Kemeny’s theory, arguing that housing regime theory needs to take into account the embeddedness within the wider welfare regime, and to acknowledge wider forces like globalization, ‘while also recognizing the importance of institutional detail’ (p. 586).
I would argue that this critique of the housing regime theory mainly based on the rental structure as narrow and limiting is particularly relevant to housing studies. Housing is ‘deeply embedded in the social and cultural structures of societies’ (Ruonavaara, 2020:8), and it is an integral part of its social practices. Clapham (2002) argued that, while most of the approaches to housing studies have a positivist view, assuming the existence of an objective reality that just needs to be unveiled by academic and social research, there is the need to use a social constructionist approach. That is, a fundamental part of housing research should focus on the interactions between different actors and on the use of language. Inspired by Foucault, discourses produce, reproduce and alter reality (creating their own “sub-universes of meanings” [Clapham, 2002:61]), and take part in housing processes by legitimizing views, policies and institutions. Housing policies and, more broadly, housing systems are thus also discursively constructed.
Blackwell and Kohl (2019) argue that a different framework regarding housing studies should focus on a path-dependence perspective. According to them, housing systems should not be analytically studied as static portraits (p.300), but have to be historically (and discursively) understood - and keeping in mind that future policies and developments in housing are bounded, limited, and shaped by past developments. It is from this point of view that Clapham’s approach to housing studies, strongly relying on discursive practices, can be
brought forward (Clapham, 2019). According to what has been said before, I believe in the importance of framing, at least partly, housing regimes within discourses shaping practices of housing regulation and provision. I look at discourse regarding housing regime theory as both an outcome and an origin of housing policies, keeping in mind, as Ruonavaara points out (2020:8), that ‘discourses define policy problems as well as policy solutions’. It is thus important to tie the concept of a regime with the patterns of actions of players in the housing systems, at a particular place and time, adding the perspective of discourse. The definition of housing regime that will be adopted in this research is thus the one proposed by Clapham (2019:4), as ‘the set of discourses and social, economic and political practices that influence the provision, allocation, consumption (of housing), and housing outcomes in a given country’.
3.3 Housing exclusion as social exclusion?
By defining exclusion according to Levitas et al.’s definition (2007), it has been noted that social exclusion is characterized by a multitude of factors contributing to it, and looking at social exclusion implies at a certain level, to look at housing exclusion. The housing system can and does play a part as a fundamental element of social and spatial stratification.
According to Sommerville (1998), ‘social exclusion through housing occurs when housing processes deny certain groups control over their lives and reduce access to wider citizenship rights’.
There has been little research examining the nexus between housing and social exclusion/inclusion. Hulse et al. (2010, 2011) have tried to conceptualize this relationship specifically in connection with the Australian policy context. Berescu et al. (2013) highlight how there are mainly two approaches regarding the discourse of housing exclusion. On the one hand, a human-rights-based approach looking at housing exclusion in the individual sense, implemented and exacerbated by elements such as spatial segregation and forced evictions. On the other hand, there is a research approach focusing more on the causes of this exclusion, mainly identified in the constant withdrawal of the State from the provision of public housing, the general commodification and financialization of housing3, and the general dismantling of welfare states in Western Europe. The exclusion of individuals or communities from access to housing can thus be tied to the discourses regarding social exclusion identified by Levitas (2005). I believe that all discourses can be somewhat interconnected in the wider context of housing exclusion. Firstly, the moral underclass discourse, focusing on alleged inherent negative behaviors of those excluded, can shed light on specific regimes of truth which shape the direction of housing policies as skewed against certain segments of the population - as in the case of the Roma. Secondly, both the redistributionist and the moral underclass discourse mainly refer to and reflect the housing exclusion of certain categories to structural factors relying also upon, but not exclusively, structures of welfare provision.
3 The topic of housing financialization has been further elaborated by M.B. Aalbers in the book The financialization of housing: A political economy approach, 2016.
Looking at the housing question and at housing exclusion using the concept of social exclusion helps to broaden the issue to wider debates of citizenship, integration, structural racism, and wider societal issues; and it especially helps to highlight and better understand the fundamental role housing plays in regards to those problems. From housing segregation and exclusion derive a multitude of limitations that affect many social groups - health status, education, access to the labor market, good social relations (Di Noia, 2016). While it can’t be claimed that solving housing exclusion could solve the other issues presented, it certainly seems logical to attest that exclusion from housing deepens other structural inequalities, and that overcoming housing exclusion is a necessary step towards overcoming the multidimensionality of broader social exclusion. Analysing the conditions of housing exclusion (inside a specific housing system) and relating them to the concept of social exclusion, allows us to comprehend with greater depth what are the wider experiences related to housing inclusion/exclusion, and how those lived experiences are shaped by specific housing conditions. Housing exclusion should not only be understood as a practical measure for conditions of disadvantage - it should be understood as a driving force behind social exclusion and, in opposition to it, as the pathway leading to possible social inclusion. It is thus important to understand in concrete terms what are the fundamental set of practices in a specific housing regime which enable and reproduce said housing conditions and outcomes in order to allow for housing to shape the trajectory of future broader inclusion.
Part II
4. The Roma in Italy: historical perspectives
The purpose of this chapter is to give a brief overview of the historical development of Roma communities in Italy. As the scope of the chapter is to summarize briefly the social and historical conditions of Roma and Sinti in Italy, certain aspects that are shortly described will be expanded upon later on in the research.
4.1 The importance of being (called) Roma
The Roma communities present on the Italian territory are an incredibly varied galaxy of different groups, dialects, traditions, and religions - many varied communities also with different names. As a first step towards introducing this research analysis, It is important to define what is the terminology used and the implications of it. While carrying out the research, I encountered many different names for Romani people: gypsies (‘zingari’ in Italian), nomads, travelers, Roma. Each of these terms has its historical development and use, and its different implications. In focusing to understand ‘how language works within power relations’ (Taylor, 2004:436, see paragraph 1.1), choosing a specific term is not a neutral action, devoid of meaning and repercussions, placed above societal structures - it is an action that carries with it meanings, imageries, and symbolisms which cannot be underestimated.
“First of all, we must put an order in the words themselves and define them well. [...]
Deciding the word is not unlike deciding the method of analysis. [...] Deciding the word is establishing a frontier”4. As we will also see later in the research, deciding the word means also shaping different sets of rights and the access to them; it means shaping ethnically and culturally defined groups outside of the norm; it means establishing the frontier between us and them.
The Italian term zingari (tsigani, cigani, zigeuner in other languages) is believed to derive from the greek-byzantine term athinganoi, which meant ‘untouchables’ (Horvát, 2014;
Malini, 2010; Montrella, 2019). This term not only carries with it a negative dimension originating from the Middle Ages, connected to the idea of Roma people being heretics, pagans; believing the Roma to be native of the Indian subcontinent, the use of the term
‘untouchables’ is also connected to the infamous lowest caste (or better yet, non-caste) in the Indian caste system, those of the dalits, also known as ‘untouchables’ (Malini, 2010). The term was indeed in general use for a long time in Europe, and it is still used in a derogatory way, while many Roma communities and organizations have called out the term for its historical racist implications (Horvát, 2014). While the English translation of the term zingaro is indeed gypsy, the English term is related to the Spanish gitano, which is considered to be derived from the old belief that Roma people came from Egypt (Malini, 2010).
4Extract from the book Aspects de la marginalité au moyen age [Aspects of marginality in the middle ages]
(G.H. Allard [Ed.], 1975, L’Aurore.)
The term nomads, while it is generally outdated and criticized in academia, is still heavily used in popular discourse as a way to address the Roma people. The etymology of the word is attributed to the Greek word νομάς which meant ‘roaming about (especially for pastures’.
The impact of the term has been generally underestimated, because it is believed to have less negative connotations than zingaro; consequently, it has been often used even at a political and normative level to describe Roma people as those without a stable home. The use of the term nomad to describe Roma people is considered not only wrong in relation to the fact that most of the communities around Europe have not been culturally nomadic for centuries, shifting to a sedentary lifestyle, and only regained a sort of ‘nomadic’ lifestyle on account of the constant persecutions and expulsions they were historically subjected to, being forced to a sort of ‘compulsory nomadism’, as Malini (2010:40) described it. It is also wrong in relation to the fact that not having a stable home has historically been regarded with suspicion, and believed to be a reflection of alleged deviant characteristics (Malini, 2010).
In this research thesis, with the purpose of facilitating the analysis and the comprehension of the work, the term “Roma” will be adopted to identify the diverse populations present in the peninsula. The term Rom (plural Roma), means in romanés “man, human being” (Montrella, 2019), and is the general term which was recognized by the very same Romani communities - it was chosen as the general name to cover the groups during the 1st World Romani Congress in 1971 (Council of Europe [CoE], 2011). I am aware of the limitations imposed by the conceptualization of this incredible cultural variety under the same collective identity, at the same time, however, I acknowledge the necessity to simplify the recognition of these groups as a necessary step in order to be able to present the proposed research. Nonetheless, I consider it important to briefly summarize the history and the presence of different Roma communities in Italy.
4.2 Who are the Roma in Italy?
It is now believed that originally, Roma people came from what is now India, leaving the area between the XI and XIV centuries (CoE, 2011). The first Roma communities reached and started spreading around Europe from the XV century, suffering from episodes of discrimination quite immediately - for example, experiences of slavery in Eastern Europe or persecution in Western Europe (Sigona, 2007). The main groups in Italy are the Sinti people, who reside mainly in Central Europe and northern Italy and have a tradition as circus artists;
the Lovari (whose name comes from “lob”, horse in Hungarian), traditionally horse farmers;
the Kalderasha, traditionally copper workers; the Rudari, originally street artists and musicians; the Khorakhané, Muslim Roma coming from Bosnia, whose name means ‘khorá (Quran) bearers’; and the Caminanti, a group of unclear origins that has historically been stationed in the city of Noto, Sicily (Montrella, 2019).
Four main migratory flows have been identified regarding Roma history in Italy (Sigona, 2007; Associazione 21 Luglio, 2019; Istat, 2017): The first wave of immigration was the one starting from the XV century. During this period, especially in the XVI century, many repressive laws against Roma people started to be implemented all around Europe: in what is
modern Romania, Roma communities were enslaved; in 1493 the first order of expulsion against Roma was emanated in the dukedom of Milan, and again in 1512, as the Roma were accused of bringing the bubonic plague to Italy (Malini, 2010). The second wave of immigration started at the end of the XIX century and intensified after WWI and WWII - that’s when 7’000 rom Kalderasha reached Italy from the Balkans, and Sinti communities came fleeing Nazi Germany. The genocide committed against Romani people under Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy is often overlooked and forgotten. The Roma call it Porrajmos, a romanés term which means devastation, destruction. Historians believe that over 500.000 Roma were killed in concentration camps (Malini, 2010). Most of the communities who came in the first half of the twentieth century have gained Italian citizenship over the years. A third influx was identified between the 1970s and 1990s, when approximately 40’000 Roma coming from Yugoslavia (and then after the dissolution of it, and the civil war in Bosnia in 1992) reached the country. And the final wave of migration, which will be discussed more in-depth later on, is the one that started in 2007, when Romania and Bulgaria entered the European Union, and thus the borders between the countries were open. Most of the Roma of recent immigration are not Italian citizens, but have the same rights recognized to every EU citizen.
Nowadays, estimates of the number of Roma present in the Italian territory vary, and are often difficult to precisely obtain. However, the most widely accepted estimates vary around 150’000-180’000 Roma people in Italy (Clough Marinaro and Sigona, 2011; Maestri, 2014;
Sigona, 2005, 2007), approximately about 0,23% of the overall Italian population. Many of the Roma and Sinti currently living in Italy are Italian citizens, around 60%, while the remaining 40% comprises the foreign Roma of more recent immigration (Sigona, 2005;
Maestri and Vitale, 2017). Around ⅓ of all Romani people, both Italian and foreign citizens, live in either authorized or unauthorized camps, usually located in the outskirts of towns, in living situations characterized by extremely bad hygienic conditions, bad connections to the rest of the city, and extremely high levels of segregation (Clough Marinaro, 2015; ERRC, 2000).
4.3 The legal status of Roma in Italy
Research and dialogues on the social conditions of Roma people in Italy are made even more difficult by the many different legal conditions that characterize different Roma groups (Sigona, 2005). The Roma of oldest immigration and those who came during the first half of the 20th century are, by now, fully Italian citizens, with the complete set of rights which should be given to this legal status. Secondly, there are EU citizens, mainly comprising of Roma of most recent immigration, who came after the EU enlargement of 2007 from Romania and Bulgaria. The Roma communities who came during the 70s and 90s, from Yugoslavia, have extremely diversified legal conditions: some are citizens of their country of origin, and thus non-Eu citizens; while others are in the extremely difficult condition of being apolidi, that is, ‘stateless people’ - this usually is the legal status of those who left Yugoslavia before its dissolution, and thus never managed to obtain citizenship from the new nations that were created after the breakdown of the state (Sigona, 2016). Different legal statuses do, of
course, influence the level of social inclusion/exclusion experienced by Roma people - such as being able to access healthcare services more easily, being able to apply for public housing, or being advantaged in finding a job - even though, as it will be described in the following chapter, having Italian citizenship or another ‘favorable’ legal status does not obstruct processes of social exclusion from different social dimensions. Sigona (2016) has highlighted the difficulties, both in obtaining citizenship from their country of origin, and in gaining the actual legal status of being stateless in Italy, for which a lengthy, complicated and expensive procedure is required, for which Roma people rarely receive assistance. One of the main aspects which cause the most difficulties in being able to gain legal recognition, is the condition of residing in the camps: an important requirement to gain any kind of legal recognition (as a stateless person, or even citizenship), is being able to prove residence - for stateless people, it is required that the person has resided in Italy for at least 5 years. But it is extremely difficult and time-consuming to gain proof of residence for those living in the camps (Sigona, 2016). These difficulties become inter-generational ones, since the Italian legislation follows the principle of ius sanguinis: Italian citizenship is acquired at birth by those who have at least one Italian parent; while children born in Italy from foreign parents need to wait until reaching 18 years, but even then they need to be able to prove “to have been residing legally (with a residence permit) in Italy without interruption until reaching the age of majority” (Legge 91/1992, art. 4 comma 2). This can prove to be difficult for those who grew up in the camps.
5. The dimensions of Roma’s social exclusion
The Roma constitute one of Europe’s largest minorities - estimates on the number of Roma people in the European Union vary between 10 to 12 million (Amnesty International, 2011;
EC, 2011). But they are also one of the most disadvantaged - the European Commission, in the ‘EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies up to 2020’ (2011) states that
‘many Roma in Europe face prejudice, intolerance, discrimination and social exclusion [emphasis added] in their daily lives’ (EC, 2011:2). Having previously framed social exclusion as a ‘complex and multidimensional process’ (Levitas et al., 2007:18), it is important to understand what those dimensions are and how they interact with each other, in order to define the Roma as socially excluded. The analysis will follow the dimensions highlighted by the European Commission (2011), with the focus on the Italian context.
5.1 Health
In regards to health conditions and access to healthcare, an obvious gap can be observed between Roma people and the majority of the population. Whereas on a European average, life expectancy is 76 for men and 86 for women, life expectancy for Roma is 10 years less (EC, 2011). Extremely bad health conditions are a general characteristic among Roma populations across Europe (Scullion & Brown, 2016). In Italy, there is a lack of national data coverage on the health condition of Roma communities, as well as a lack of a clear and unified policy regarding Roma access to medical assistance (Azienda USL 5 2007), a right that is recognized by the art. 32 of the Italian Constitution. Mostly, the safeguard of health is left in the hands of the local health authorities ASL (Azienda Sanitaria Locale) by regional
laws. For example, in the Lazio region, the regional law (L.R. 82/1985) ‘Norme a Favore dei Rom’ (norms in support of the Roma), which historically was one of the first laws developed specifically in regards to the Roma populations, states in art. 4 that ‘the local health authority responsible for the territory ensures to the rest camp the hygienic surveillance [emphasis added] and medical assistance’. The same term is used in the Veneto regional law, art. 3 (L.R. 54/1989) - ‘medical surveillance is ensured in the rest camp’. It is particularly interesting to note the use of the term surveillance (‘vigilanza’ in Italian) - it seems like what is ensured is merely an act of control, instead of the access to the health facilities per se. In regard to this observation, Perocco (2016) notes how, after his analysis of the health conditions and health disparities of Roma people, what emerges are critical issues in the access to sanitary structures - such as limited fruition for the people residing in camps (which also leads, as he points out, to improper use of the emergency room, given the lack of other options); and direct and indirect discriminations put in place.
Overall, the main critical issues in regard to Roma’s health conditions that can be drawn from Perocco’s (2016) analysis are: the lack of vaccinations, and a high percentage of people who are not registered in the national health service (SSN). In regards to this aspect, a distinction has to be made between the different legal status - for example, in Rome, it emerged that are in possession of the national health card 97.5% of Italian Roma, who have been residing in Italy for a long time; 75% of Yugoslav Roma, 37.6% of Romanian Roma; and 18.4% of Bulgarian Roma, the ones of most recent immigration (Fondazione Abriani, 2012). It is also important to highlight how the health condition is heavily connected to the housing question.
Many Roma camps are located in extremely unsanitary conditions - peripheral areas characterized by high environmental and noise pollution, often located close by to landfill sites, incinerators, or highways - locations that have often been connected to an increase in cancer mortality (Perocco, 2016).
5.2 Education
The aspect of education is also telling in regards to the condition of exclusion of the Roma. It is acknowledged on a general level in Europe that Roma children have an extremely low level of completion of even primary education in many countries, that they are often over-represented in special education (Amnesty International, 2011; EC, 2011), and that illiteracy rates often are over 50% (Scullion and Brown, 2016). In Italy, a slight increase in registration has been shown in preschool and middle school - but still, the rate of children who leave the education system after middle school without proceeding to high school, is abysmal. According to a report from the Ministry of Education (MIUR, Fondazione ISMU, 2016:40), in the academic year 2014/2015, on a national level, 2.179 children were enrolled in preschool, 6.441 in primary school, 3.569 in middle school, and only 248 were enrolled in high school. The same report states that ‘it is undeniable that the number of Roma enrolled in school is extremely inferior to the number of Roma minors in the age for compulsory education’ (p.40). In Italy, the education system used to be outright segregated for Roma children: In 1965 the Ministry of Education established separate classes, called Lacio Drom.
They were definitively abolished in 1982, when Roma children were integrated into the
general classes, with the help of special ed teachers. While the education system is not outright segregated anymore, many problems still persist. A report from Associazione 21 Luglio (2013), highlighted the many difficulties Roma children face everyday in Italian schools: many teachers have stated that, due to the difficult social disadvantage many Roma children come from, they often struggle to keep up with the curriculum (p.23), and many teachers interviewed in the report have said that they believe it is the ‘context’ that makes all the difference, because the institution didn’t put them in the necessary position for them to be able to count or even write properly (p. 25). While more often than not these shortcomings are only reconnected to alleged cultural deficiencies - for example, a general belief that Roma parents don’t want their kids to go to school, because they bring them with them to beg in the streets (Di Noia, 2016b). What this discourse purposefully ignores are the structural difficulties Roma children face in relation to schooling, such as the constant conditions of economic and housing precariousness they have to deal with everyday. This is especially true for the children who come from the camps - an absolute lack of services, constant evictions and re-collocations, and the placement of the camps in extremely peripheral areas - all contribute to damaging even a basic thing such as reaching the school. For example, interestingly enough Associazione 21 Luglio (2013) highlighted the difficulties for the children living in the via Salone camp, in the eastern periphery of Rome. Since there was no bus line close to the camp which connected it with the neighboring areas, the children had to be escorted by social cooperatives’ workers to all of their schools - going as far as 16 km at times. Having to stop at each school to escort the children inside, some of them at times arrived to class even 60 minutes later, and sometimes had to leave earlier at the end of the day in order to pick up children from other schools in time (p.16). All of this, because of the completely isolated placement of the camp. These conditions cause not only practical disadvantages - they contribute to shaping a particular psychological condition of segregation which hinders their active participation in the school system (Di Noia, 2016b).
5.3 Employment
The ‘EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies up to 2020’ (EC, 2011) set as a goal 75% of Roma aged 20-64 to be employed. A report on the implementation of the strategies (EC, 2019) showed that the share of Roma aged 20-64 in paid work was 43%, while the employment rate in the EU in 2020 was 73.1% (Eurostat, 2020). In Italy, employment conditions for Roma people are very dire: Basso (2016) confronts several surveys and reports in different Italian cities, and what emerges is an unemployment rate in a range between 39% and 65%, while the average unemployment rate in Italy is 9.2% (source:
Istat) - although it has to be noted that youth unemployment is particularly higher, reaching 29.7% at the beginning of 2021 (Tucci, 2021). The severe conditions of discrimination Roma are subjected to has a multitude of effects also on employment, stemming from ideas that Roma are prone to stealing, which leads to people being less inclined to hire them (Basso, 2016). There is also a relation between employment and housing conditions - Fondazione Abriani (2012) highlighted relevant differences between Roma living in an accomodation and Roma living in the camps (even then, there are differences between those residing in the formal and the informal camps). The report showed that the employment rate for Roma
