The Politics of the Roma in Italy and Spain

As mentioned briefly in the analyses of the previous chapters, perceptions of Romanian migration in Europe have been closely tied to images of the Roma ethnic group. Cases of conflation of the Romanian nationality and the Roma ethnicity have been common in both Italy and Spain, and this has been broadly aligned with a general consensus in Europe on the categorisation of Romanian Roma as a specific, culturally different and separate social group to mainstream society (Vermeersch, 2012). Such a view has been persistent over time and consensual across political parties from left and right, with both often sharing an understanding of the policy problem to be addressed as the living conditions of the Roma, caused by an apparently nomadic culture . However, this also disregards the fact that, although within the Romanian emigrant population there has been an ethnic Roma contingent, it has been estimated that this represents only a very small minority of the total (Cova, 2009). This calls for a closer examination of the politics of Roma migration in these countries, which is the topic of this chapter.