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PART I
CHAPTER 1
NEOLIBERALISM AND THE SPIRIT OF NONGOVERNMENTALISM
Toward an Anthroposociology of Roma-Related Engagement and Activism
Huub van Baar
The fall of socialism has inaugurated a new chapter in the history of Roma-related activism and has coincided with the diversification, strengthening, and deepening of the Romani social movement in and beyond Europe (Vermeersch 2006; van Baar 2011a). One of the profoundly new conditions under which the post-1989 movement has taken place has been the Europeanization of the representation of the Roma. What I have called “the Europeanization of Roma representation” designates, first, the post-1989 problematization of the Roma in terms of their “Europeanness”; second, the classification of heterogeneous groups scattered over Europe under the umbrella term “Roma”; and, third, the devising of Europe-wide programs dedicated to their rights, inclusion, development, empowerment, and participation (van Baar 2011a: 153–89). Historically, those who are called, or call themselves, “Roma” have often been considered a “non-European” minority, with origins outside of Europe, “dangerous” for “progress” and “civilization” in Europe. Yet, since the fall of Central and Eastern European state socialism, the Roma have been reclassified as a “European minority” to be respected and included as “true Europeans.”
This development toward Europeanizing the Roma’s status and representation represents a unique case, as no other minority has become the target of such wide-ranging processes of Europeanization, nor of the large-scale development programs that have been launched by state-related institutions, international governing organizations (IGOs) such as the European Union (EU) and the World Bank, and a wide range of civil society organizations (CSOs). The Europeanization of Roma representation has enabled (at least) some of the Roma—primarily Romani activists engaged in governmental boards, advocacy groups, activist networks, and grassroots movements—to become critical players in the public and political debates about their status and in the large policy fabric that has been built around them. By developing their own heterogeneous social movements across and beyond Europe, Romani actors have entered the post-1989 political scene as active agents, rather than passive “victims” of how others have continued to represent them (Vermeersch 2006; van Baar 2011a; 2013). Increasingly, they are not just the objects and subjects of discourses, programs, and instruments of inclusion, development, and participation. The Europeanization of Roma representation could be understood as a shift from considering the Roma as the externalized outsiders against which Europe defines itself to representing them as the internalized outsiders to be integrated as participating “true Europeans.”
At the same time, this shift does not represent a decisive, but only a highly ambivalent, turn toward considering the Roma as “true Europeans” (van Baar 2011a; 2015). Current practices, such as the ongoing expulsion of Romani migrants from France and Europe-wide manifestations of antigypsyism, show that the Roma frequently still end up in the symbolic or administrative cloud of “non-Europeans.” Despite the institutionalized promises of inclusion and European citizenship, both at home and in the European countries into which the Roma have migrated since 1989, they continue to be dealt with differently than other national and EU citizens. Thus, they “need to put in additional efforts to be regarded as equal and full citizens of the states where they live and the ‘Europe’ to which they belong” (van Baar 2011a: 18).
The ambivalences inherent to the Europeanization of Roma representation, and particularly the trend of the last decade toward a deterioration, rather than improvement, of the situation of many Roma, have encouraged several scholars and activists to reflect on the role that Roma-related activism has played in generating these ambiguous results. This chapter focuses on the post-1989 development of the heterogeneous Romani social movement and takes stock of the rise and impact of “nongovernmentalism,” that is the emergence of the “nongovernmental” as a category of rule and research in Roma-related policy-making and scholarship. The focus on nongovernmentalism does not imply that I seamlessly identify it with Roma-related activism or the Romani social movement, as if these are just three terms for one and the same phenomenon. Yet, many activists associate or align themselves with a more or less organized form of the “nongovernmental.” Therefore, the “nongovernmental”