Policy brief on Migration of Roma in EU: The case of Romani asylum seekers from Western Balkans. This policy brief provides data and policy recommendations aimed to confirm that temporary and/or permanent systems of reintegration for Roma asylum seekers in the Western Balkans 5 states (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia).
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Myths about Roma education are widely used in the academia produced by governmental and non-governmental agencies. One of them says “Roma parents frequently do not regard education as necessary and do not encourage their children to stay in school” (Friedrich Ebert Schtiftung, 2002, 19) such statements are very dangerous because they produce different stereotypes and prejudices, which very often result in the exclusion of a particular group. Nevertheless, the socio-economic situation of Roma also plays a significant role in this process. Combined all of the above mention dimensions produce exclusion and xenophobia of Roma minority. However, one of the major problem that Roma minority face is the school segregation. In the latest Human Right Report by United States Department for Hungary it is stated:
“Segregation of Romani schoolchildren remained a problem. NGOs and government officials estimated that one-third of Romani children were educated in segregated classes and that school officials placed 20 percent, without justification, in remedial classes for children with mental disabilities, effectively segregating them from other students. Schools with a majority of Romani students employed simplified teaching curricula, were generally less well equipped, and were in significantly worse physical condition than those with non-Romani majorities” (Human Rights Report 2013, 1)
Reports such this from the United States Department, just confirms the assumption that Roma children are exposed to study in segregated schools without any justification, the number of 20% is frightening. On January 29th, 2013 the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that European governments must end segregation and discrimination against Roma children in schools. In the case of Horvath and Kiss v. Hungary, the Court found that Hungary had violated the European Convention on Human Rights by segregating Romani children in a special school – following a legal struggle that began in 2006. The Court noted that Roma children had been over-represented in the past in special schools due to the systematic misdiagnosis of mental disability. Still is believed that most of the Roma children are placed in the special schools due to their ethnicity and social status.
One of the most interesting anthropological and political topic in the late XIX and XX century was the study of the history of nations, their distinct cultures, and identities. Throughout the history, European nations have endured and surpassed challenges preserving their sovereignty and territory. Today, the subjective political world depends on the interests of the nation states and the power to dominate the international scene. Roma as a nation inhabited the European continent in the XII century without any opportunity and tendency for territorial, cultural unification. However, the “white” continent continuously evolved throughout history, groups of people unified in nations protecting themselves and their interests through their national states. They protected their cultural heritage and upgraded for unity and unification, while Roma, who settled in the existing nation states as the “others” had to adjust to the conditions set by the majority of the countries that they settled.
This paper aims to analyze and deconstruct the concepts of formation of a nation, cultural development and identity with the emphasis on the Roma in the process of creating a multi-state nation with unified culture and identity. In this paper, I also present facts and the literature arguments that establish the standardization of widely accepted understandings of the concepts mentioned above.
The protection of the fundamental rights of our children represents the future of our planet. Over the last years, authorities from Western European countries claimed to be confronted with various problems caused by the phenomenon of migration and the presence in their country of Roma ethnic minority coming from East European countries. One of the most visible source of anxiety is related to begging on the public space of the cities and the increasingly visible involvement of children in begging activities.
How has children’s presence in this unsuitable position occurred? What prevents authorities from taking actions towards the active social protection and assistance of these children in line with their dramatic situation and the status as children?
In this paper I will critically examine a number of sociological explanations’ for the presence of Roma children in begging and also to consider what is the position of the state in relation to protection of their children’s rights and their best interest.
I argue that the state is producing a new form of ”institutional racism” under a cover of „unintentional racism” by turning a blind eye to the children’s universal rights in order to stigmatize and restrict social and geographical mobility of Roma ethnic minority due to their ethnic origin.
This present effort is based on the analysis of the phenomenon, of its complexity as well as of its socio-economic and political implications. Therefore some theoretical aspects of social and political behaviour require clarification, and also the identification of how best to limit and control any type of social or institutional performance in relation with racism. I will study this processes through a sociological perspective of its manifestation respectively as a social process that involves many stages, different actors, the relationship between these actors, and factors associated with it.
By many people and researchers the 20th century is called “century of genocide”, a genocide where under the Nazis, German attempts to rid the country of “racial inferiority” caused many people to be killed without any mercy. Because of the victim numbers, the Nazi genocide was a unique point in the human history. One of the least known aspects of that genocide is the Pharrajimos – The Roma Holocaust. According to Janos Barsony and Agnes Daroczi, Pharrajimos means cutting up, fragmentation and devouring in some dialects of the Romani language. The term Pharrajimos/Porrajmos was introduced for the first time by Ian Hancock in the early 1990s. The same term in the international literature can be found as “Samudaripen” or Roma Holocaust. Surprisingly or not, there are still on-going debates about whether what have happened to Roma could be considered as part of the notion of Holocaust or not.
In this paper, I analyze the reasons for lacking an official recognition and representation of Pharrajimos in the history. Therefore, I look at Nazi’s ideology, the experience of Roma before, during and after the Holocaust. I demonstrate that Nazi German’s ideology was the same for Roma people as it was for the Jewish community - the idea of racial superiority, and I challenge the claim that is not because of their antisocial and criminal behaviour. Moreover, I indicate how participation in a globalized holocaust discourse could improve the visibility of the Roma. I conclude by highlighting the importance of deserving an official recognition of the Roma victims specifically by the United Nations, represented at all international conferences and the history.
We live in a globalized world that recently is facing with a deep economic crisis. Worldwide, every fifth person is poor and in Macedonia every third citizen. From a historical perspective, poverty is a phenomenon that has always existed in societies because of anomalies in the system of organization of the state. Unlike the past, today poverty is unacceptable and is a constant challenge for its elimination and eradication. Poverty is inherently contested concept. However, scientists, policy makers, and even politicians agree on one thing - that poverty is a problem. Whatever the definition or description of the poverty is, the primary or underlying message is that poverty is not just a condition, but an unacceptable condition.
After the Second World War governments undertook greater responsibility and determination to eliminate poverty, so that the common platform set to rebuild Europe with the Marshall Plan and set Millennium Development Goals 2000-2015.
In the world over 80% of people live with less than $ 10 per day, 25 thousand children die every day due to poverty, 12.3 million people are victims of forced labor and 186 million are unemployed. Macedonia is also covered by these trends, according to the UN (United Nations), 50% of the population live in some sort of poverty and despite this discouraging figure it is considered that certain social groups are particularly exposed to poverty when compared to the other. 
The Republic of Macedonia, inevitably is part of this process, and for these reasons it has a strategy for reducing the poverty. Nevertheless, despite the adoption of the strategy, there was an upward trend of the poverty by 4% in 1990, that reached to 30.4% in 2011. This situation indicates that there is a need of adjusting the lifestyle of the population according to the minimum conditions. Learning a new way of living with fewer opportunities and limitations is a difficult and painful process for the individuals and the families.
However, part of the Macedonian citizens has been living for long time in poor conditions and I can say that they “got used” to it. I talk about the Roma community, which is a synonym for successful survival in poor substandard living conditions. Therefore, considering the growing trend of poverty in the world and in Macedonia it is time to set up reverse thesis that in terms of increased poverty there is no need to “integrate” the Roma community in the current social trends. Conversely, the new generation of poor people should be integrated and taught by the example of the Roma community. In this short analysis I will give some examples of how the new poverty in Macedonia can be adjusted or integrated to the lifestyle of the Roma community.
The global economic crisis that hit Europe in 2008 worsen the prospective for employment of minorities in the labor market across South East Europe (Bartlett & Uvalic, 2013). The expansion of the crisis change the behavior of all stakeholders - governments began to intervene in the banking system, global consumption declined, while the private sector began to fire workers. The lessons learned from the economic crisis in the past teach us that poverty, unemployment and the hostility among people increase. In this context, the labor market is the main target of the private sector, which provides interventions such as reducing wages and layoffs usually directed to specific ethnic, gender, age or religious group.
There is no doubt that discrimination of Roma exist in the education and labor market, which in large part can explain the employment gap between Roma and Non – Roma in Central and Eastern Europe. Few studies, (Kahanec, Messing, Fabo, & Brozovicova, 2012), (Kezdi & Kertesi, 2010), (O'Higgins, 2012) decompose the employment gap and conclude that discrimination has significant impact on the explanation of unemployment level among Roma. Even though, these studies confirm that the discrimination in the labor market occur, in many cases is difficult to determine and hence react in cases where it appears. Nevertheless, these attempts to establish a link between the discrimination and unemployment provide little information of the channels of discrimination in the labor market.
Therefore the primary focus of this paper is to demonstrate the patterns of discrimination in the labor market in Macedonia from an economic point of view. Particularly, through the economic models of discrimination I argue that Roma are unequally treated in the labor market, both in the private and public sector.
According to all previous reports of Freedom House, Macedonia is partially free democracy. Serbia was unfree democracy until the fall of Slobodan Milosevic. In the last decade in our Balkan surroundings despite Macedonia partly free democratic countries are Albania, Bosnia, and Kosovo. This fact shows us in what kind of democracy we live. According to the current electoral system in Macedonia, the political competition implies an inferior position of the Roma political bloc. The Roma community is not able to compete among their ranks; they are forced to make a coalition with the larger political parties if they want to achieve a particular political or institutional position in the state. So it appears that the choice of Roma political representatives is dictated by the quantity (numbers), and not by quality.
According to the definition every attempt to organize people themselves through same ideology and to achieve certain goals should be considered as a social movement. This means that any attempt on formal or informal group of Roma through particular idea and achieving certain interests is considered as a movement. It is important to note that every social movement has its own life cycle: it is created, achieve success or failure and eventually turns into something else, or cease to exist.
It is assumed that more serious attempts of creating Roma movement started in the early 90's with the self-organizing of Romani activists by the formation of NGOs. The attempts of creating the Roma Union and initial ideas of self-definition are still present and as such they are taken into consideration this analysis. The beginnings of the Roma movement viewed through a historical perspective can be considered from 1971 by keeping the first Roma Congress and the creation of the Roma Union. Beginnings of the so called "Roma movement" cause a significant change in the behavior towards Roma in the society. It can be freely say that before coping with the political and social reality of the Roma was defined "outside" by various systems of power and the majority population.
This study presents the results of the public opinion survey, conducted by Romalitico. The research consists of an online survey with questions related to the parliamentary elections and the trust in the Roma political parties. The survey was conveyed during the period from November 14th to April 18th, 2014, on a sample of 350 people.
Internet (online) survey is one of the newest and most modern research tools for measuring the public opinion. These surveys provide a space for measuring the general public opinion in various topics, but often in areas such as health, economy and politics in order to obtain different descriptive and inferential statistics.
Romalitico for the first-time conducts an online survey to test the public opinion of Roma in Macedonia about the Roma political parties and their work. The primary goal of this survey is to capture the opinion of the Roma middle class because we believe that this group is driving the changes in society and is less vulnerable to electoral manipulation. The initial assumption, based on previous research (Ncube, 2011); (Dunlap, 2008), was that the population that has access to the Internet, in fact, represented the so-called Roma middle class.
Romalitico with this research brought a new dimension to the political situation of the Roma electorate, which is of common importance to the public and Roma political parties. In addition, this survey has a goal to produce a public debate about the focus on the parties and their expectations in the next parliamentary elections.