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BUCHAREST, May 16 (IPS) - A Roma ghetto in Ponticelli neighbourhood of Naples, Italy, was burnt down May 14 by locals angry over a reported attempt by a Roma young woman to kidnap a baby. The incident shows that, when it comes to living together with the 10 million Roma, Europeans today have no better answer than the "Gypsy hunts" of the Middle Ages.The attempted kidnap in Naples is merely the last in a string of publicised crimes committed in Italy by Roma, usually from Romania. In the most notorious case, Romanian Nicolae Mailat raped and killed Italian teacher Giovanna Reggiani Oct. 30, 2007, on the outskirts of Rome. Italian human rights organisation Opera Nomadi has calculated that of the 160,000 Roma living in Italy, roughly 60,000 come from Romania. Most of them inhabit improvised camps on the outskirts of towns or next to rivers. The Roma are a community that is believed to have migrated to Europe from India since the 14th century. According to a survey commissioned this year by the Romanian Agency for Governmental Strategies, over 60 percent of Italians believe that criminality rates in their country have increased because of Romanians. Italians further said they considered Roma "the most difficult to tolerate." Close to one million Romanians currently work in Italy. Romanians are said to be responsible for most of the illegalities committed by foreigners there. There is no clear indication that criminality rates for Roma from Romania are higher than for their non-Roma compatriots.
Yet, this has become a major political issue only in Italy. What gives? What is specific to Italy that brings the need for convenient scapegoats?
And yes, in France too, Roma people have been linked to crime, but mostly petty theft. Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.
I think one of the issues is that the Rom do not integrate, make no attempt to do so. Coupled with their poverty it makes them outsiders but who become suspect. It happens in the UK where the children of gypsies, being undeucated and not in school are associated with lots of feral petty crime and vandalism. So people don't want them around.
Of course, the gypsies argue, with some justification, that it is difficult to enter a community when there are so many barriers to prevent them. Land is expensive, houses are expensive, they are desperately poor. They are effectively excluded and the authorities have no interest in welcoming them due to the local crime wave that is expected to follow them.
I have wondered how the circle can be squared and feel that we should make more effort, but not in the South east cos there's a bloody big long queue for help. But certainly in towns that are under-populatedlike Hull and the N East. Course, that's a bit of a pipe-dream cos there's no intent to do anything right now.
But equally, even if we did, they'd have to meet us halfway and I'm not sure that willingness exists within the majority. They want society and its benefits, but they also want to be outside of it. Settled, but free to wander. Educated, but not in education.
Their free-booting lifestyle doesn't fit with the modern world, but this is a cultural trait at least 15 centuries old. These peoples were first invited from NW India into the persian empire in the 5th century AD, to provide music dance and genral entertainment in return for land and seed grain to plant. But they are not seettlers nor farmers and as soon as they'd eaten the seed grain and the king said "no more", they moved on. Westward. keep to the Fen Causeway
In past discussions here, it's been suggested and fairly widely agreed that anti-Roma racism is something we Europeans have in common, from West to East and back again. I'm thinking of deviousdiva's diaries, especially the Roma Series and Breaking Down Roma Stereotypes. Also Bulgarian Gypsies (Counter Argument)! by darin. When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
Local authorities don't have accurate counts on population and so service provision falls behind need, making life more difficult for everybody.
and that's with a white immigrant community who try to fit in, send their kids to school, have jobs, pay tax.
One only has to look at the residual resentments against orthodox jews, who are nowdays largely insulated by wealth, to see how people who set themselves apart will remain generationally suspect.
But gypsies in the UK (I can't answer for other groups) largely don't try to integrate. A few years back I was friendly with a senior member of some gypsy-advisory council and he would become quite irate about the idea that the itinerent lifestyle was an issue that prevented education, integration etc. As far as he was concerned it was their culture and they had every right to indulge it. Fine I'd say, but there are costs. Poverty, alienation, local resistance are the least of them. Your choice.
Now, I outlined a set of possibilities that might allow both sides to meet. But I accepted that there are problems on both sides. It is always politically difficult to spend money on groups of people who won't meet you halfway, insisting on the state subsidizing a lifestyle that sets them apart. Just remember the resentments at paying unemployment benefit to the criminal parasites on the Convoy 20 years ago. Accusing me of lazy racism for pointing out that there is a 50-50 split in responsibility doesn't really help. It isn't victim blaming to say that gypsies are, to some extent, agents of their own misfortune and it's not helpful to deny that.
I was unaware of the bulgarian essay, but I have been very interested in deviousdiva's essays. My impression is that those rom, much more poverty stricken, are not so wilfully itinerent. They want to send their children to schools and would stay around to ensure this. The schools refuse them. This is not true of the UK where rom children are constantly moving to the disruption of education and authorities lose patience.
Now to wind this back to Italy. I am not surprised that creating large ghettoes on the edge of towns and cities is causing friction. It would irrespective of who the immigrants were, even southern italians going to N Italy and creating poverty stricken shanty towns would cause strife. Romanians are gonna get it in spades.
What the solution is I don't know. Italy is a mess already, and these people provide a handy scapegoat for the problems . Especially as they have nothing to do with it. But what they want is work. Is there work ? If there isn't, then there is going to be trouble. Such ghetto conditions breed criminality. You don't have to be pre-conditioned towards crime to recognise when there are no other choices. Look at S africa to see where that goes.
Governments in europe are struggling generally to cope with movements within europe, irrespective of the job situation. Language is a barrier within the EU. There are plenty of jobs in Poland right now, but the Rom can't speak polish. This is on top of the mass migration from sub-Saharan Africa which is bleeding into the southern states. I have suggested that the EU needs to develop policies and overviews on these developments, the satus quo isn't holding and expecting individual countries to deal with this may be okay with the UK, but it's difficult for greece and spain, let alone a basket case like Italy.
I'm getting lost in the strans now, so I'll stop. keep to the Fen Causeway
Accusing me of lazy racism
I said your basic arguments are in fact similar to those advanced regularly by nationalists playing the xenophobia card, but I said your comment was well-meaning, ie I did not accuse you of anything, let alone of lazy racism.
I dug out the Bulgarian essay for the comments thread because it debated a lot of these points.
To your points: all you say about East European arrivals and "generationally suspect" orthodox Jews reinforces what I say. It's their fault that they're different and there are supposedly too many of them, or it's a simple fact that most people refuse to accept cultural outsiders? What I mean is, which way round are we looking at this?
BTW, I knew sedentary gypsies who were perfectly settled in council houses (or other private accomodation) in England in the '60s and '70s, just as there are in France, so I have a job with the idea that there is a monolithic refusal on their part to change their traditional habits. Perhaps increased motricity has changed that somewhat - after all, isn't planetary nomadism a prestigious recent phenomenon, don't middle-class people move around by car and plane as an essential element of their lifestyle, don't all kinds of people find freedom in movement? I suggest that's what's wrong with the Roma is not that they don't "settle down", but that they're scary brown people with a huge cultural baggage they're far from solely responsible for. When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
Yes, human beings are tribal. We tend to react with suspicion to those who hold themselves apart or behave in ways the majority culture consider odd. Peer group pressure is a powerful tool of conformity and those who resist will face sanctions. However much we might pretend otherwise, it's the nature of the beast within us.
Some cultures have developed more authoritarian and conformist tendencies than others but most express sanctions against the outsider, even if it manifests just as a low level distrust. So yes, in some respect it is their fault. It would be nice if we, as a species, were more accepting but. We. Just. Aren't. We, as thinking liberals, can recognise the impulse and move beyond it, but I think history shows that, across populations, the veneer of civilisation isn't quite as robust as we might wish.
Now, in saying that I am not saying it is their fault, even 50%, merely that over time minor differences will be exaggerated, both by the minority as a signifier of proud difference and by the majority as an excuse for discrimination. A perfectly human tendency kinda makes things worse.
So, does it matter which way round we look at it ? What's done is done and we need to move forward more urgently than we need to explain past grievances. Both sides need to recongise that there is a problem and each played a part in creating it and each has apart to play in fixing it. Right now I don't see such recongnition by either group.
Yes, there are a lot of individuals who have assimilated. Group tendencies don't preclude individual variant behaviours. I dson't necessarily see a great difference between our positions except mine is perhaps a more brutal acceptance of how people are. keep to the Fen Causeway
The camps are quickly taken over by criminal gangs, that act as intermediaries between the local authorities and the community they "represent" and repress. Corruption and blackmail are endemic. The ideology behind the camps does nothing to take into account the ethnic and religious strife between various Rom populations. Bureaucracy is complicated and ineffectual thus favouring inroads for criminal organizations such as the camorra. It's a permanent state of alienation.
A policy of dismantling the camps and facilitating the Rom in finding cheap housing would go a long way in resolving the problem. This is practically impossible since cheap housing, as soon as it goes up, is quickly taken over by organized crime.
And as usual, B is all talk and no cattle... Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.
The illegal immigrants, especially the Rom, rely on the camorra for "protection" or "private ordering." They are used as a sub-proletariat work force. They are used for illegal dumping or any "job" that is highly dangerous for their health so long as they are guaranteed to be left alone.
Whether camps are authorized or illegal makes little difference. It's organized crime that keeps order in both cases. And organized crime could just as well be behind some of the arson attacks against the Rom. There is nothing contradictory in this behaviour for the camorra's prime interest is to assert and advantage its authority by any means.
The recent attacks against the Rom have been favoured by the zeitgeist blown in by the far right win. Paradoxically, it is a leghista the minister of the Interior who must do something to put out the fire they stocked with their irresponsible rhetoric.
A good study on the problem of private ordering and organized crime isThe Dark Side of Private Ordering: An Institutional and Empirical Analysis of Organized Crime by Milhaupt and West.
