Staging Citizenship. Ioana Szeman

Staging Citizenship - Ioana Szeman


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of citizenship to Romanian ethnicity. However, I focus here on the transformative potential of counterpublics, conveyed by Michael Warner’s definition, as ‘spaces of circulation in which it is hoped that the poesis of scene making will be transformative, not replicative merely’ (Warner 2002, 88). Viewed in this way, Roma counterpublics, which resist the citizenship gap and challenge the hegemony of ethnic nationalism,12 have the potential to include non-Roma and Roma alike. Through performances analysed in this book, Roma articulate belonging to Romania, imagining Romania as a pluralistic, diverse nation and proposing alternative views of citizenship that do not equate the nation with an ethnic group. While I identify these counterpublics as Roma, non-Roma may share the same views, just as the hegemonic public can be both non-Roma and Roma. For example, in the reality show Clejanii, Viorica identifies herself as a hard-working woman who does not conform to commercially promoted standards of feminine beauty that objectify women. She appeals to a counterpublic who understand and appreciate the labour behind her successful musical performances as a Roma artist.

      Another example of performance of citizenship addressing a Roma counterpublic is the August 2010 edition of the television programme Roma Caravan, dedicated to the expulsions of Roma from France. In this programme, Daniel Vasile, vice-president of the Roma Party for Europe, and George Răducanu, Roma activist, accused both French and Romanian governments of racism and criticized the treatment of Roma Romanian citizens as second-class citizens. They spoke to a Roma counterpublic and pointed out that the forceful expulsions and evictions of Roma in France and Romania, respectively, reflected the French and Romanian governments’ similar attitudes towards Roma. This was one of the rare instances where unequivocal criticism of the expulsions was broadcast on Romanian television and media in general.

      The Citizenship Gap in Pod: Basic Citizenship Rights and Cultural Citizenship

      Pod, the settlement near the refuse site where I conducted ethnographic research with poor Roma, represents the materialization of the gap between legal and actual citizenship: the space, erased from official maps, where Roma with legal Romanian citizenship are de facto non-citizens and experience a complete failure of their citizenship rights. I see the spatial reality of the citizenship gap as a variation of Giorgio Agamben’s (1998) camp. The camp, according to Agamben, is where refugees live as non-citizens, a place for zoe or ‘bare life.’ From the state’s point of view, Pod has been reduced to a gap; however, my ethnographic research brings into focus the subjectivities of Pod’s inhabitants – not unlike Sigona (2015), who uses the term ‘campenization’ to discuss the status of Roma living in camps in Italy (see also Sigona and Trehan 2009; Hepworth 2015).

      This book shows how neoliberal economic policies – including large cuts in social security, the disappearance of low-skilled jobs and work opportunities for Roma, and evictions from formerly nationalized properties that were returned to their owners after 1989 – have disproportionately affected Roma. I discuss everyday experiences of the citizenship gap for Roma from Pod, such as the enrolment of Roma children in a school for children with learning disabilities, and mistreatment by the police; I also discuss how Roma in Pod have resisted the citizenship gap through dance performances and their own claims to belong in Romania. Pod and other similar places, contrary to media representations, are connected to Romanian society through a series of informal networks of relatives, acquaintances and new arrivals. Pod residents express these affective ties to Romania when they speak of ‘our country, Romania’, ‘our politicians’ and ‘our language’, the latter sometimes being Romani and sometimes Romanian. Their views on belonging echo those expressed by prominent Roma activists, whose strategies in the media and cultural events aim to raise public awareness about Roma history and Roma contributions to culture and society.

      ‘Roma Culture’ Clashes: The State, the EU and Roma NGOs


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