Coping with everyday bordering: Roma migrants and gatekeepers in Helsinki (original) (raw)
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From 2007 to 2008, the presence of migrant-beggars from Eastern European countries in Finland has brought about much discussion regarding the status of this group in what is perceived as a model welfare state. The beggars, identified mainly Roma from Romanian and Bulgaria, were not easily fitting within the ideals of work culture within a Nordic welfare society. Moreover, no clear demarcation was made between the groups of migrant Roma and the national, Finnish Roma community. This paper focuses on the views of some of the Finnish Roma 'elite' regarding the presence of Roma beggars in the Helsinki area, dealing with the interactions between national and migrant Roma in the city of Helsinki as a consequence of Eastern European Roma migration to this area and bringing into question the limitations of an ethnic approach to Roma migration. The focus is on analysing the contradictions and ambiguities in what could easily (yet problematically) be understood as 'intra-ethnic' relations.
Free to Move Along: On the Urbanisation of Cross-border Mobility Controls - A Case of Roma 'EU migrants' in Malmö, Sweden, 2019
This thesis traces the local government response to the presence of impoverished and street-homeless so-called vulnerable EU-citizens in Malmö (Sweden’s third largest city) between the years 2014-2016, and develops an analysis about how bordering takes place in cities. “Vulnerable EU-citizens” is an established term in the Swedish context, used by the authorities to refer to citizens of other EU Member States who are staying in Sweden without a right of residence and in situations of extreme poverty and marginality. A majority of those whom are categorised as “vulnerable EU-citizens” are Roma from Bulgaria or Romania. Starting from the observation that “vulnerable EU-citizens” have been pervasively problematised as unwanted migrants, the thesis asks how the municipal- and local authorities in Malmö act to discourage and otherwise manage their mobilities by controlling their conditions of stay. In doing so, it seeks to elaborate on theories about intra-EU bordering practices, and to elucidate some of the mechanisms, effects and implications of urban mobility control practices. Methodologically, the thesis is structured as a case study, centring on the case of the intensely contested Sorgenfri-camp – a makeshift squatter settlement that housed a large proportion of Malmö’s estimated total population of “vulnerable EU-citizens”. The Sorgenfri-camp was established in 2014 and lasted for a year and a half before it was demolished in November 2015 on the order of the City of Malmö’s environmental authorities. Often referred to in the media as “Sweden’s largest slum”, the Sorgenfri-camp was quite literally a central locus of a local and national political “crisis” regarding the growth of unauthorised squatter settlements. As a “critical case”, it offers a vantage point from which to trace the development of policy and government practices towards “vulnerable EU-citizens” and observe how the authorities negotiate the legal ambiguities, moral-political dilemmas, and social conflicts that swirl around the unauthorised settlements of “vulnerable EU-citizens”. It also serves as a key example of a more widespread framing of “the problem of vulnerable EU-citizens” as an order, nuisance and sanitation problem. The analysis is carried out with a theoretical framework informed by Foucaultian poststructuralist theory and theories of scale, combining insights from the field of critical border and migration studies with concepts from the legal geographic literature on urban socio-spatial control. In particular, it follows socio-legal scholar Mariana Valverde’s (2010) call to foreground the role of scalar categorisation and politics in the networked policing of various non-citizens. The analysis addresses the construction of the Sorgenfri-camp and its residents as a “nuisance problem” in popular and policy discourse, and explores the effects and consequences of this framing in the context of the administrative-legal process that resulted in the demolition of the settlement. The thesis highlights the city as a space where complex negotiations over residency-status, rights and belonging play out. It submits that local authorities in Malmö have responded to the presence and situation of vulnerable EU-citizens in the city by enacting a series of practices and programs that jointly add up to an indirect policy of exclusionary mobility control, the cumulative effect of which is to eliminate the “geographies of survival” for the group in question. Furthermore, it argues that this reinforces the complex modulations of un/free mobility” in the EU: destitute EU-citizens who are formally free to move and reside within the union are repeatedly moved along, and thus effectively prevented from settling. This is taken to be illustrative of an urbanisation of mobility control practices: a convergence between mobility control and urban socio-spatial control, or a rescaling of mobility control from the edges of the nation-state to the urban scale and, ultimately, to the body of the “vulnerable EU-citizen”.
Constructing Roma Migrants. European Narratives and Local Governance
Springer, Cham, 2019
This open access book presents a cross-disciplinary insight and policy analysis into the effects of European legal and political frameworks on the life of ‘Roma migrants’ in Europe. It outlines the creation and implementation of Roma policies at the European level, provides a systematic understanding of identity-based exclusion and explores concrete case studies that reveal how integration and immigration policies work in practice. The book also shows how the Roma example might be employed in tackling the governance implications of our increasingly complex societies and assesses its potential and limitations for integration policies of vulnerable groups such as refugees and other discriminated minorities. As such the book will be of interest to academics, practitioners, policy-makers and a wider academic community working in migration, refugee, poverty and integration issues more broadly.
Journal of International Migration and Integration, 2018
The paper examines the ways and processes of creating exceptions to the enforcement of human rights law in the case of the Eastern European Roma migrants within the European Union. It uses as case study the 2010 campaign of Roma migrants' evictions and repatriations from France, and the related events that followed over a period of six years. The analysis of the discourses of French and European Union officials in relation to the evictions and repatriations highlights the relationships between the discursive construction of unwanted categories of migrants, and migration policy making by national governments and at a European Union level. The main argument is that these evictions and repatriations were primarily a fundamental rights issue due to the discriminatory dimension it was given by those proposing and applying it. However, the issue of discrimination became secondary in the debates which rather focused on the exceptional nature of the Roma and framed this population as an exception from human rights law enforcement. Concomitantly, the discourses made a shift from protection against discrimination to the issue of integration. The analysis examines the implications this shift had on diminishing the responsibility of national and EU authorities for protection against discrimination. Keywords Eastern European migrants. Roma. Expulsions. Discrimination Highly controversial measures such as expulsions as well as borderline legal measures in curbing Westward migration of Roma ethnics have been documented throughout Europe (Bigo et al. 2013; Tervonen and Enache 2017) before and after the accession of Eastern European member states. Some scholars name these measures an attempt to
Border struggles within the state: Administrative bordering of non-citizens in Finland
Nordic journal of migration research, 2018
Drawing on interviews with non-EU citizens, who arrived as asylum seekers or students in Finland, I examine different aspects of materialisation of borders within the state. This article focuses on non-citizens' negotiations with the immigration bureaucracy, in particular on administrative procedures in residence permit applications. The analysis of non-citizens' immigration trajectories and various border struggles during the conditional period before obtaining a permanent residence permit reveals the non-linear nature of immigration. The immigration process involves transitions in the legal status, which consequently affect non-citizens' position in the labour market, access to welfare services, and the terms of family reunification. The concept of administrative bordering introduced in this article highlights the significant role of the bureaucratic procedures in migration management. I argue that administrative bordering related to the inclusion and exclusion of non-citizens creates pervasive insecurity about one's presence and future as it can potentially modify individual immigration trajectories.
In this lecture, given in April 2015 at Duke University, I argue that, in order to adequately understand the contemporary situation of Roma in Europe, we need to move beyond the currently dominant methodological Eurocentrism. In the context of Roma-related scholarship, ‘methodological Eurocentrism’ refers to analyses of the Roma’s societal position that do not sufficiently take into account how representations of both Europe and the Roma have significantly and interdependently changed since the collapse of socialism. Since the fall of communism, we have been able to observe what I call the ‘Europeanization of the representation of the Roma’, that is, firstly, the post-1989 problematization of the Roma in terms of their Europeanness and European identity; secondly, the classification of heterogeneous groups scattered over Europe under the umbrella term Roma and, thirdly, the devising of Europe-wide developmental programs that are dedicated to their inclusion, integration, anti-discrimination, empowerment and participation. I will clarify how we can understand the Europeanization of Roma representation as the latest stage of the various ways in which those who are currently called, or call themselves, Roma have historically interacted with Europe. I argue that, since 1989, a shift has taken place from considering the Roma as the Orientalized and externalized outsiders against which Europe has defined itself to considering them as the internalized outsiders to be incorporated in Europe as productive, participating and ‘true Europeans’. This shift has enabled the Roma to become actively involved in the political and policy debates about their representation, in attempts at improving their situation, and in the deepening and widening of the heterogeneous Romani movement. Yet, I will explain why this shift is fundamentally ambiguous. It has contributed to problematizing the Roma in ambiguous ways at the present-day nexus of security, citizenship and development. I will show how a threefold redirecting of Roma-related scholarship will help to critically reflect upon these problematizations beyond currently dominant Eurocentric and Roma-centric parameters.
Un/Free mobility: Roma migrants in the European Union (2017)
This special issue showcases work that theorises and critiques the political, economic, legal, and socio-historical (‘ethnic’ or ‘cultural’) subordination of the European Roma (so-called ‘Gypsies’), from the specific critical vantage point of Roma migrants living and working within and across the space of the European Union (EU). Enabled primarily through ethnographic research with diverse Roma communities across the heterogeneous geography of ‘Europe’, the contributions to this collection are likewise concerned with the larger politics of mobility as a constitutive feature of the sociopolitical formation of the EU. Foregrounding the experiences and perspectives of Roma living and working outside of their nation-states of ‘origin’ or ostensible citizenship, we seek to elucidate wider inequalities and hierarchies at stake in the ongoing (re-)racialisation of Roma migrants, in particular, and imposed upon migrants, generally. Thus, this special issue situates Roma mobility as a critical vantage point for migration studies in Europe. Furthermore, this volume shifts the focus conventionally directed at the academic objectification of ‘the Roma’ as such, and instead seeks to foreground and underscore questions about ‘Europe’, ‘European’-ness, and EU-ropean citizenship that come into sharper focus through the critical lens of Roma racialisation, marginalisation, securitisation, and criminalisation, and the dynamics of Roma mobility within and across the space of ‘Europe’. In this way, this collection contributes new research and expands critical interdisciplinary dialogue at the intersections of Romani studies, ethnic and racial studies, migration studies, political and urban geography, social anthropology, development studies, postcolonial studies, and European studies.
Un/Free mobility: Roma migrants in the European Union
Social Identities, 2017
This special issue showcases work that theorises and critiques the political, economic, legal, and socio-historical ('ethnic' or 'cultural') subordination of the European Roma (so-called 'Gypsies'), from the specific critical vantage point of Roma migrants living and working within and across the space of the European Union (EU). Enabled primarily through ethnographic research with diverse Roma communities across the heterogeneous geography of 'Europe', the contributions to this collection are likewise concerned with the larger politics of mobility as a constitutive feature of the sociopolitical formation of the EU. Foregrounding the experiences and perspectives of Roma living and working outside of their nation-states of 'origin' or ostensible citizenship, we seek to elucidate wider inequalities and hierarchies at stake in the ongoing (re-)racialisation of Roma migrants, in particular, and imposed upon migrants, generally. Thus, this special issue situates Roma mobility as a critical vantage point for migration studies in Europe. Furthermore, this volume shifts the focus conventionally directed at the academic objectification of 'the Roma' as such, and instead seeks to foreground and underscore questions about 'Europe', 'European'-ness, and EU-ropean citizenship that come into sharper focus through the critical lens of Roma racialisation, marginalisation, securitisation, and criminalisation, and the dynamics of Roma mobility within and across the space of 'Europe'. In this way, this collection contributes new research and expands critical interdisciplinary dialogue at the intersections of Romani studies, ethnic and racial studies, migration studies, political and urban geography, social anthropology, development studies, postcolonial studies, and European studies.