Roma and Gypsy-Travellers in Europe. Modernity, race, space and exclusion

Abstract:

This book looks at the plight of ‘Gypsies’ (Roma and Gypsy-travellers) as one of the most marginalised groups in European society, subjected to racism, social and economic exclusion and forced population displacement.

The work is organised over eight chapters, the first being by way of introduction. Chapter two looks at the relationship between modernity and its outsiders. Chapter three concentrates upon the formation of ethnic and racial identity and the process of racialisation in European life as seen from the Roma and Gypsy-travellers’ perspective. Chapter four examines the creation of spatial structures in which power relations are implicated and from which outsider groups are excluded and marginalised. Chapter five considers the forms of exclusion discussed in earlier chapters and places them in the context of recent UK legislation. Chapter six draws together the work of the three previous chapters with a study of the response received from government and the media by the Roma of Central and Eastern Europe who tried to claim asylum in Western Europe and Canada in the 1990s and later. The impact of regionalisation, globalisation and localisation as forms of exclusion for Roma and Travellers is the subject of chapter seven. The final chapter summarises the main findings of the study and argues that since the 1990s there has been a retrenchment of regulative discourses affecting Roma, Gypsy-travellers and other outsider groups within Europe.

The book will interest scholars and students engaged in social sciences, European integration and ethnic relations.