Provincialising Citizenship. Critical anthropological notes on the uses and usefulness of...

Paper presented at the 2015 BASEES conference, Cambridge

March 29th, 2015

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Ana Nichita Ivasiuc

Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany

[email protected]

Provincialising Citizenship: critical anthropological notes on the uses

and usefulness of „citizenship” in the context of the Roma political

subject

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to explore and critically interrogate the uses and usefulness of the concept of

„citizenship” in construing the Roma as political subject. Drawing on a wide spectrum of multi-

disciplinary literature on citizenship, and deconstructing the theories which contributed, in the last

two decades, to the emergence of a political science literature on the Roma as political subjects, the

paper brings in anthropological insights to question the productivity of „citizenship” with regards to

the Roma political subject. While traditional concepts of citizenship risk to be inappropriate for the

Roma case, mirroring „gadjo1-centric” conceptions of being political, critical anthropology can

contribute to „provincialise” these conceptions in favour of more flexible, culturally appropriate and

productive readings of what it means for Roma to be a political subject.

Introduction

The argument proposed here draws upon several lines of reasoning stemming from a

multidisciplinary approach of the current reflexions on citizenship, both on the conceptual and the

empirical levels. It has been motivated not only by the on-going theoretical discussions on the

(re)definitions, transformations, applications and normative presuppositions of the concept in recent

literature, but also by anthropological reflections stimulated by my years of research among the

Roma of Romania and the multiple occasions of field work conducted in various communities.

Prior to the start, I wish to argue for the plus-value which anthropology, with its epistemological

principles and its research methods, can bring into political science debates. Anthropological

research is founded on the principle of perpetually questioning pre-constructed categories „from

above” for the groups and phenomena to which it devotes attention (Neveu 2012). The research

endeavour commences by allowing the emic perspective2 to emerge (Harris 1976), in a „bottom-up”

movement in which the concepts and categories of the researcher should efface themselves from the

1 Gadjo (fem. Gadji, pl. Gadjé) = term assigned by the Roma to non-Roma.

2 The emic perspective denotes the ways in which the researched „subjects” themselves understand and

construct the world, by means of categories and concepts meaningful to themselves. The etic perspective, sometimes considered opposed to the emic, refers to the bird’s-eye view academics adopt in their theorisation efforts. Nevertheless, it has to be noted that the two perspectives may also be viewed as complementary instead of opposed. For an illuminating discussion on this point, see Morris et al. 1999.


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observation process as much as possible. Even though, unsurprisingly, it is acknowledged that the

anthropologist is the product of her own societal influences and cultural internalisations and there

are limits to the distance she is capable to take from them at any given moment, the rules of

anthropological field work demand that the researcher engages in reflection, in an attempt to de-

centralise her own cultural concepts and cognitive categories before entering the field. This de-

centering movement, consisting of the displacement of conceptual categories from the core of how

we see the world to the provinces of our own conceptions of what the world is (on an observational

level) or should be (on the normative plane), recalls what Chakrabarty named „provincialising”. As he

explains in the preface of his thought-provoking book „Provincialising Europe. Postcolonial Thought

and Historical Difference” (Chakrabarty 2000:X), he began to question the „undoubted international

significance” of Marxist categories when he noticed the tensions arising from the attempt of applying

these concepts to the history of the working class in Bengal. Without necessarily rejecting universal

categories stemming from European political modernity as such, he sets as objective the task of

exploring the ways in which European thought, „at once both indispensable and inadequate in

helping us to think through the experiences of political modernity in non-Western nations”, „may be

renewed from and for the margins” (Chakrabarty 2000:16). By building a parallel with this endeavour,

I intend to trace the ways in which the political category of „citizenship”, seemingly indispensable to

political thought, is at any rate inadequate in thinking through the multitude of ways in which the

Roma3 experience and manifest political belongingness to entities such as the (nation-)state or the

European Union.

This is nothing new: Gayatri Spivak (1999), for example, has already shown, in her analysis of

Mahasweta Devi’s fiction, how subaltern speech-acts cannot be adequately represented in concepts

such as „citizenship” and „nationhood”, with their particular European enlightenment genealogies,

cultural load and normative corollaries. Such positions have facilitated a critique of political science

and international relations literature with their eurocentric „doxa” negating plural – past or future –

histories, calling for an „intellectual decolonisation” and an aperture towards multiplicity and

heterogeneity (Bigo 2009). The methodogical prescription for this endeavour is to shift away from

philosophical and legal categories in favour of practices, including the ones of the unfamiliar;

patently, this is something to which anthropology can oblige particularly well.

The aim of the paper is to bring into a critical spotlight the concept of „citizenship” itself, as it has

been applied to the Roma case, and interrogate its promises by drawing on its conceptual pitfalls, on

one hand, and on empirical evidence gathered through fragments of anthropological research4, on

the other hand. Through a focus on the grassroots, I propose to shift the attention from the

conventional focus on political practices of the Roma „intelligentsia” active in institutional settings

involved in Roma activism, or „the formal side of the movement”, as Vermeersch (2007) defines it, to

the daily practices encountered in Roma communities. Simultaneously, I am aware of the risks

entailed in tracing such apparently immovible boundaries between the two; since a theoretical

debate on „grassroots” is not the aim of the current paper, for reasons of parsimony I will take the

3 I wish to stress unequivocally that when I invoke „the Roma” it is stricly for linguistic parsimony reasons, and

not to suggest any unity of representation and practice among the many various groups usually put under the

umbrella of „Roma”. To attempt to do justice to the diversity – or, in order to go beyond ethnicity and account

for hybridisations and the interplay with other variables, the „super-diversity” (Tremlett 2014) – of „the Roma”,

I will use in my paper examples from various groups, across variables of clan, gender and economic status. 4 This paper is not the result of a focused research on the topic; rather, it is the outline of possible research

paths indicated by some preliminary observations from field work undertaken to other ends during the last

years.


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definition of the Roma grassroots to signify Roma groups living in or near Roma local communities,

who, although they may have links with it, are usually not part of formal structures of the Romani

movement.

The paper’s argument unfolds in three movements. First, I formulate some concerns regarding the

culture-blindness and empiric scarcity of political science studies of „citizenship”; by presenting some

questionments around the Roma, I hope to clarify why anthropological and ethnographical accounts

of practices and representations are a necessary methodological addition leading to conceptual and

theoretical enrichment of citizenship studies. Second, I will discuss two axioms inherent in the liberal

conception of „citizenship”, which are intrinsically linked with the culture-blindness and scarce

empiric support analysed in the first section; I question the foundation of „citizenship” on the

individual, as well as the emancipatory promises of „citizenship” in light of its genealogies,

strengthening the argument that other vocabularies and frames may prove more fertile for research

on Roma politics. The third section is divided in two movements. After revealing some tensions

between Roma politics, its representation through political science research, and the European

citizenship in its various articulations within the neoliberal project, I will propose hints for a culturally

relevant and empirically grounded perspective on Roma politics at grassroots level and advocate for

the renewal of an anthropology-inspired scholarly debate on „citizenship” „from and for the

margins” through a shift towards a micropolitics of belonging.

Citizenship and anthropological discontents

The reader may have noticed my reluctance to take the concept of „citizenship” with both hands: the

felt necessity of insulating it with inverted commas before handling it translates uneasiness in using it

uncritically, as a category „from above”, imputable to my déformation professionnelle as an

anthropologist.

Prior to delving into these considerations, the plurality of definitions and perspectives on citizenship

must be acknowledged. The retreat of the nation-state in the neoliberal era has brought with it

transformations of the concept and hyphenations which modulate citizenship to mean often quite a

different thing than the initial sense of „membership in a state”. Nevertheless, „postnational

citizenship”, underneath its transformations signifying the emergence of a notion of universal

personhood above the national membership (Soysal 1994), maintains the sense of belonging to a

polity as defining core.

The section is not intended as a summary of the various definitions and approaches to citizenship

and its transformations, but rather as an articulation of criticisms revealing controversies out of

which may arise suggestions as to how to enrich the debate on citizenship or shift some of its focal

points in the case of the Roma political subject.

Culture-blindness

The starting point of my critical unpacking of the concept of citizenship from an anthropological

perspective simply has to be the prevailing culture-blindness of theoretical constructions of

citizenship, which transpires from most political science literature (Nic Craith 2004; Isin 2005 and


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2013; Nyers 2008; Andrijašević 2013; Clarke et al. 2014). This „original sin” of theories of citizenship

is hardly surprising: during the decolonisation process, the state system became internationalised

and nation-state citizenship was rendered universal and institutionalised (Hindess, quoted in Rygiel

2012); thus, in the wake of colonialism, a political order originating in a very particular cultural, social

and political context – the European one – imposed itself as the only possible path for the

organisation of polities globally. This internationalisation of political structures and their cognitive

counterparts – political categories – has occulted their embeddedness in a particular cultural context.

As Wendy Brown masterfully demonstrates, liberal political thought emerging from the European

context is particularly adroit in concealing its own cultural embeddedness, among other dynamics by

promoting a powerful discourse on „the universality of its basic principles: secularism, the rule of law,

equal rights, moral autonomy, individual liberty. If these principles are universal, then they are not

matters of culture, which is identified today with the particular, local and provincial” (Brown

2006:21)5. The culture-blindness of citizenship theories, often coupled with a discount of the power

relations in which the practice of citizenship and its conceptual construction have originated, has

determined some critics to advance that citizenship can be read as „a kind of conceptual imperialism

that effaces other ways of being political” (Nyers 2008:2). The conceit of universality of liberal

political categories functions as to subordinate other political practices and relegate them to the

domain of the „pre-modern”, „not yet quite there”, understood as non-European and inferior in

terms of sophistication and complexity, therefore less worthy of serious political analysis. Other ways

of being political have thus been abandoned to the study domain of anthropologists.

With regards to citizenship studies and the neglect of culture, it has been contended that „[t]he

mistake has been to focus analysis almost exclusively upon institutional and constitutional

arrangements, thereby downplaying the hierarchies and relationships of inclusion and exclusion

informed by race, ethnicity, class, gender and geography that determine access to citizenship in real

terms. There has been too much focus on „rights talk” and its „emancipatory rhetoric” and too little

attention accorded to the contexts, meanings and practices that make citizenship possible for some

and a far-fetched dream for most” (Nyamnjoh 2008:77). This echoes anthropological literature which

has argued for a perspective viewing citizenship as a „cultural process” (Nic Craith 2004:296;

Andrijašević 2013:50), where categories of race, ethnicity, class, gender, religious belonging and

sexuality, to quote just some of the markers of difference between groups, are culturally bounded

and articulated.

It is the supposed universality, inescapability and the normative saturations of citizenship which, I

argue, orients researchers stemming from political science to identify and theorise manifestations of

citizenship in the case of subordinated groups, prior to (and often plainly without) inquiring about

the cultural embeddedness of those groups in their larger social settings, about their representations

and practices related to state or supra state level politics and about how culture gives shapes to the

political, or, in other words, the political culture, with its practices and representations. Additionally,

they often fail to address issues of variation in understandings and practices related to seemingly

5 It is worthwhile quoting her at length when she explains the mechanism through which liberalism constructs

itself as cultureless: „The double ruse on which liberalism relies to distinguish itself from culture – on the one

hand, casting liberal principles as universal; on the other, juridically privatising culture – ideologically figures

liberalism as untouched by culture and thus incapable of cultural imperialism (...). But liberalism is no more

above or outside culture than is any other political form, and culture is not always elsewhere from liberalism.

Both the autonomy and universality of liberal principles are myths, crucial to liberalism’s reduction of questions

about its imperial ambitions or practices to questions about whether forcing others to be free is consonant with

liberal principles” (Brown 2006:23).


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unproblematic political concepts in different parts and regions of Europe: the Roma seem disjointed

and analytically insulated from the political cultures which developed in their societies. But this is

exactly where the universalistic pretences of liberal political categories conceal the diversity of

practices and representations outside established conceptions.

For anthropology, it is common place to affirm that political practice is structured by the central

values upheld at any given time by a community and that political culture shapes practices and

representations in different ways across the globe. One does not even need time-consuming

anthropological fieldwork in order to acknowledge that political culture displays great variations

across the EU. A simple look at the Democratic Index, without too much time-consuming

anthropological fieldwork, shows discrepancies in political representations and practice between

Western and Eastern, as well as between Northern and Southern European societies. As quantitative

research claims, Central and Eastern European countries would be marked by weaker „citizenship

norms” and lower levels of civic and political involvement (Coffé and Van der Lippe 2010).

Attention to the developments spurred by the fall of the Soviet rule in Central and Eastern Europe

reveal adaptations and redefinitions of the „imported” liberal political categories. Katherine Verdery,

while exploring the meanings and practices of citizenship in the former Soviet bloc, suggests that

political categories in the West cannot be but imprecisely equated with what they designate in the

„rest”: „The end of socialism brought "democracy" - a word whose etymology means "rule by the

people." But while observers from western countries came to ratify that the elections were free and

fair, they failed to ask: Who are "the people" that will be allowed into the social contract creating

citizens and rights? In the history of democracy in the U.S., "the people" was bounded to exclude

persons of the "wrong" sex and race; in the former Soviet bloc, the criterion that disrupts citizenship is

ethno-national/cultural identity. In the Eastern European context, "people" is more readily an ethno-

national term than a label for collective sovereignty by individual "social contractors"; the sovereign

thus becomes the ethnic collectivity; democracy becomes ethnocracy.” (Verdery 1997).

Historic analyses of Romania during the modern state formation show, for instance, that the

institution of citizenship was founded on a fundamental contradiction between the liberal discursive

claims for universality, copycat conceptions originating in the Western European context, on one

hand, and essentially illiberal practices engrained in the disenfranchisement of large groups of the

population, among which religious and ethnic minorities and women (Iordachi 2001). Research on

citizenship must always articulate conceptions, representations and practices of citizenship with a

thorough understanding of their historical and cultural embeddedness (Bigo 2009). These analyses

let emerge the fact that citizenship in countries of the former Soviet bloc is based on a conception of

belonging to the majority ethnicity as primary criterion, to a much larger extent than in more

established Western democracies. The popular representation of state belonging as belonging to the

ethnic majority is rich in consequences for the Roma. The primacy of the ethnic criterion induces

hierarchisations of citizenship, whereby the Roma are either constituted as second rank citizens or

denied commonality of citizenship altogether6.

6 Denials of citizenship can be read in the practices of some bureaucrats to inscribe „Gypsy” in the „citizenship”

field on birth certificates of newborn babies whom they would identify as Roma (ERRC 2013). In Romania, a

more symbolic denial of citizenship, producive of boundaries, is the discourse proscribing the use of the

ethnonym „Roma”, on basis of its phonetic proximity to „Romanian” and of the widely shared repugnance

against the „amalgamation” between Roma and Romanians.


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Political science literature on the citizenship dynamics in the case of the Roma is particularly lacking

in cultural sensitivity7. Generally, it does not explore or even make references en passant, to other

forms of belonging which the Roma may practice, such as the extended family or the clan8, or a

community of language. One may wonder, naturally, whether such mentions would be relevant or

productive for citizenship studies. I argue the affirmative: the issue of belonging on a macro scale (to

the nation-state, the EU) is preceded by a myriad of belongings on a medium and micro scale (the

linguistic and religious community, the clan, the region, the locality, the neighbourhood, the

extended family, but also the class and social status, and, importantly, gender), likely to shape

patterns of political action and to structure a multiplicity of ties and dynamics of belonging.

For instance, it makes sense to wonder whether similarities of practice and representation can be

traced in the case of Roma from regions of Romania which have been linked to slavery or

deportation in different ways, and whether these are significant for variations in political belonging

and practice. The great variations between, for instance, the Hungarian-speaking Gabor or Romungre

from Transylvania (who also entertain citizenship ties with Hungary and enjoy rights based on their

belonging to the Hungarian community of language), the Romanian speaking Rudari (who often, but

not always, contest Roma ethnicity), and the Muslim Khorakhane Roma from the East of Romania

(marginalised by other Roma, but also by other Muslim groups), predict also variations in political

practice and representation, different patterns of negotiation of citizenship, as well as attitudes

regarding membership to various polities.

Also, what inflections of (non-)belonging to the nation-state push some Roma to engage in

permanent emigration9, while others move in paths of circular, seasonal migration, but with a clear

anchor back home? How do the culturally embedded relations with the non-Roma from the same

locality impact belonging to the nation-state or other forms of polities? In terms of religious

belonging, how do the families and communities recently converted to Neo-Protestantism, or the

more established Roman Catholic, Orthodox or Muslim ones, relate to political belonging?

Religious belonging may, indeed, reveal central to issues of political action: not only the

Transnational Romani Movement has incorporated powerful political organisations rooted in

religious belonging (GATIEF: the Gypsy and Traveller International Evangelical Fellowship and IREM:

the International Roma Evangelical Mission) (Ivasiuc 2014:140), but Evangelism has been seen to

„work as a political force” at grassroots level (Gay y Blasco 2000). The obvious links between the

Afro-American civil rights movement and (Neo-)Protestant religious practice, as well as other

experiences of conversion to Pentecostalism in Latin America, as „the religion of the persecuted and

the poor” (Beissinger 2011) should indicate fruitful paths of research on the articulation of religious

7 Not a single author from the more theoretical academic traditions has wondered whether there is, in Romani,

a word for „citizenship”. In the vernacular versions of Romani, there isn’t. The literary themutnipen, derived

from themut (empire, kingdom, city) is a neologism inscribed in dictionaries at the moment of the

establishment of an official Romani language, but unsupported by popular use. Far from supporting a fixist

image of language, I read in the absence of „citizenship” in vernacular language a hint as to the absence of such

representation among the Romani speaking Roma (I am indebted to Cătălina Olteanu for her support in

elucidating this linguistic issue). 8 Clan belonging may entail crucial hints as to the political organisation of groups. In anthropological literature,

perhaps the best known example is Evans-Pritchard‘s account of the centrality of the social organisation

around kinship as basis for the political system of the Nuer from Southern Sudan. 9 With some even requesting political asylum: Hungarian and Czech Roma have been granted asylum in Canada

(Tóth 2010); in 2000, a number of Roma families from Hungary was granted refugee status in France

(Vermeersch 2007).


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and political belonging in the case of the converted Roma. Moving on from political science

vocabularies refering to the formal Romani movement to anthropological accounts, we may invoke

Lászlo Fosztó’s anlysis, contending that „‘rituals of the Spirit and of the open heart’ such as those

found in Pentecostal revivals appeal to people for whom direct access to ritual empowerment and a

symbolic bracketing of the social order can produce and reinforce a universalistic orientation of the

self. Universalistic symbolism promises a radical reversal of status hierarchies and immediate access

to resources and social mobility” (Fosztó 2007:188), pinpointing to a „heavenly citizenship” (Gog

2009:104) which entails the potential of being articulated with other modes of more mundane

political action. The collective engagement in conversion can be read as an expression of belonging

and contesting established orders (Fosztó 2007:119). This suggests hybridisations of citizenship which

can be revealed by shifting the focus from the macropolitical (the formal side of the Romani

movement) and from registers of action visible on the radar of political science, to the micropolitical

of everyday practice in its cultural frame and anthropological accounts of practices and

representations.

Scarce empiric support

Linked to the first point, the second methodological criticism to citizenship theory which may enrich

the debate from the perspective of anthropology is the fact that „what ordinary people associate

with citizenship” has been identified as „one of the biggest lacunae in the literature” (Joppke

2008:43). From the perspective of a discipline in which contextualisation is the basis of theorisation,

this shortcoming is not negligible (Neveu 2012). The empirical void in which much of citizenship

theorisation takes place precludes an in-depth understanding of the work of inclusionary /

exclusionary dynamics of citizenship rooted in experience. In this point of criticism, anthropology

allies with the feminist insistence of embodying and contextualising citizenship, rather than accepting

its suspension in a purely abstract realm (Lister 2008:54-57). Thinking in abstracto about citizenship is

liable to occult the complex ways in which exclusion is lived and to curtail the exploration of

pathways of resistance to exclusionary practices. In turn, canvassing strategies of resistance to

exclusion may open up the conceptual boundaries of citizenship and enrich the debate.

That recent literature has acknowledged the necessity of interrogating the ways in which citizenship

operates „as a lived experience” (Isin et al. 2008:3) is a promising development. This

acknowledgement calls for greater contextualisation and empiric embeddedness of citizenship

studies and stresses the importance of ethnographic accounts of citizenship enactments, a concern

shared across disciplines (Nic Craith 2004; Neveu 2012; Çağlar and Mehling 2013). Simultaneously, a

greater contextualisation in daily practices and experiences necessarily contributes to connecting

citizenship to culture and cultural practice, thereby addressing the first criticism exposed above.

The interest for a greater empiric grounding of citizenship studies amounted to the proposal of „acts

of citizenship” as analyzable events through which citizenship is claimed by subordinated groups (Isin

and Nielsen 2008). Some scholars have even posited that acts of citizenship should be viewed and

used as a methodology challenging conventional approaches to citizenship (Andrijašević 2013:49).

However, the focus on acts of citizenship as a methodology entails a few shortcomings, among which

the disproportionate focus on the performance side of activism, as well as too little concern for in-

depth changes of habitus. As to the Roma case, the focus on acts of citizenship performed by activists

(Aradau et al. 2013) evades issues of representation of the Roma activist intelligentsia in relation to

the „grassroots” they profess to speak for. As Dagnino demonstrates (2008:60), under neoliberalism,


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an important displacement of the meaning of political representation took place in that „civil society”

organisations’ „capacity to represent seems to be displaced onto the kind of competence they have”,

thereby breaking away from responsibility towards their „constituencies” and contributing to a

fracture between their professionalised (and often depoliticised) vocabularies and those of the

grassroots. In the Roma case, Nicolae Gheorghe was vocal in pointing out that the Romani

movement, embodied in Roma civil society organisations, has significantly and deplorably moved

away from the „grassroots” (Gheorghe with Pulay in Guy 2013:42 and 86). In this context, the focus

on „elite” Roma activism from the sphere of professionalised NGOs risks to produce

methodologically and conceptually problematic pars-pro-toto metonymies. Concluding that „the

Roma” claim citizenship through certain performances formulated as acts of citizenship loses from

sight the process through which collective claims of some groups are articulated (Andrijašević

2013:58), internally and externally negotiated, as well as issues of representation reflecting wider

concerns.

„If thought is to be something other than mere subjective opinion, it has to have anchorage in the

historical world of citizenship talk and practice within which we find ourselves, a world that is

constituted and reconstituted in relation to traditions of citizenship, both past and present” (Yeatman

2008:103). Analysing the possible traditions of citizenship (as membership in a polity) on which the

Roma may build up and which they might articulate with conceptions and practices of citizenship

more easily identifiable as such by political scientists is a preliminary step which may illuminate and

inform citizenship studies to a new level. But in searching for these traditions, one must also beware

of identifying certain elements as traditions of citizenship, when other concepts would be more

appropriate. For the Kalderash Roma, for example, what regulate social conduct in communities are

cultural concepts of honour, shame and cleanliness, which mediate rights for individuals within their

communities, rather than traditions of citizenship „proper”. Obeying the cultural rules guarantees

membership in the community and the enjoyment of rights. But simultaneously, these cultural rules

also work in constructing boundaries around the group and delimitate the inside from the outside,

the community in which membership is relevant (one’s own), from a Gadjé world in which

membership stakes may or may not be relevant. The relevance of membership of particular groups

of Roma in Gadjé worlds still needs to be interrogated through empiric research prior to the analysis

of forms and manifestations of this membership under the label „citizenship”. In other words, how

can one be sure that what one studies is indeed about membership in a polity, and not, for instance,

about negotiation, exchange, boundary tracing, or some other process granting some sort of benefit?

How do the people themselves see what they do through their practices?

This set of questions calls into the debate epistemological concerns about the ontology of the studied

objects and their constructedness and discussions in the philosophy of science which reach far

beyond the scope of this paper. Suffice it say, with Bruno Latour, that „[f]or scientific, political and

even moral reasons, it is crucial that enquirers do not in advance, and in place of the actors, define

what sorts of building blocks the social world is made of.” (Latour 2005:41).

Promises or dead-ends? Theoretical dilemmas

If the first two criticisms formulated towards citizenship studies refer more to methodological

concerns, this section’s endeavour is to uncover some of the theoretical tensions of the concept of

citizenship which critical citizenship theories have underlined.


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Privileging the individual in citizenship

In the first section I mentioned that the centrality / de-centrality of certain values for a particular

group structures its political practices and representations. I would like to follow this argument more

in depth, by advancing the case of the Roma and wondering how a conception of citizenship as

grounded in the individual may articulate for groups in which the individual does not have the

sacrosanct overtones it has in liberal political thought.

Indeed, it may reveal itself problematic that citizenship prescribes individual, rather than collective

self-preservation, for populations which value group belonging and community preservation above

the individual level. Cultural variation accounts for different representations and manifestations of

individualism: at the one end of the spectrum, individualism may be virtually worshipped (such as in

the liberal western traditions); its universality should not, however, be taken for granted: at the

other end of the spectrum it may be shunned as a threat to group ties and solidarities. That

citizenship is „bound up with individualism” (Yeatman 2008:102) curtails its promises for some of the

Roma groups whose cultural values stress group ties and their precedence over individual concerns,

and raises crucial questions as to whether the appropriation of vocabularies of citizenship in the case

of some Roma groups, and their subsequent mobilisation in political struggles, may reveal appealing

to them, and whether the application of such frames of analysis may be relevant to scholars. As Anna

Yeatman reminds us, echoing the concept of socialisation through which children learn the cultural

norms of their environment, „There is nothing automatic about a human being achieving unit status.

For this to occur, the human being has to live within a world that values living life on one’s terms and

in one’s own way, and that offers both support for and facilitation of this way of being” (Yeatman

2008:106).

At this point, one has to acknowledge, however, the particular centrifugal dynamics of Roma

feminism10 in relation to the precedence of group preservation over individual rights and freedoms.

The tensions inherent in the Romani movement between Roma feminism and the segments

advocating for unity in the face of discrimination and exclusion by the Gadjé, issuing injunctions to

postpone the feminist agenda as a secondary concern (Bițu 2005), are revealing of the dynamics at

play in this multiform, fragmented movement. From a political science perspective, citizenship

struggles based on the focus on individual freedom and rights are essential for Roma feminism in the

achievement of gender equality.

However, among the unconscious biases deriving from the culture-blindness of liberal political

thought, „liberalism’s excessive freighting of the individual subject with self-making, agency and a

relentless responsibility for itself” (Brown 2006:17) not only conceals the structural power relations

10

Roma feminism (in its explicitly assumed form) stems, however, largely from the middle-class segments of

the Roma within Roma activism. The feminist representations and practices of Roma at the grassroots, or

traces of what could be coined, after the model of African, Black or Chicana feminism, „Romani feminism”, is,

deplorably, a largely underresearched field in Romani Studies. The absence of this focus in research stems,

perhaps, from an unchecked assumption based on the belief that Roma women would be totally subjugated to

Roma men (because of the allegedly „pre-modern” character of Roma culture), and therefore what could be

identified as feminist practices and representations at grassroots level are unlikely to exist. I strongly refute this

essentialising argument, not only in light of the cultural racism it conveys, but also in virtue of empiric evidence

found earlier in research on the Boldeni flower traders clan, in which there are clear matriarchal elements

(control of family finances and decision making by the grandmother, as well as female leadership of the clan

until relatively recently) (Chirițoiu et al. 2011).


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giving birth to groups with shared trajectories and shared practices, but also plants in the liberal

category of citizenship the seeds for its own depoliticisation in the neoliberal era11.

Genealogies of exclusion, but promises of emancipation?

The genealogy of citizenship reaches back to a process of ascription, resulting in the production of

citizens / non-citizens along arbitrary boundaries tied to rigid criteria, such as the jus sanguinis

principle, still structuring citizenship membership in a number of European countries. The genealogy

of citizenship, in the writings of Locke, is also tied to a certain conception of who could be citizen (the

rational male property owner) and who could not – „the ‘others’ of citizenship”: „the woman (...), the

atheist, the foolish, the ‘idle poor’ and the American Indian” (Mezzadra 2005). Especially these two

last categories resonate with the ways in which the European Roma are problematised in popular

discourse as the undeserving poor, the „benefit tourist” and the dehumanised12, essentially non-

European salvage who, eventually, should go „back to India” (no pun intended). One may claim that

the concept of citizenship has transformed and „democratised” since Locke, but some of the criteria

for exclusion from substantive citizenship have bitterly survived in the case of the Roma and do their

work unhampered in our days. What does that say about citizenship and its emancipatory promises?

Ayelet Shachar offers an unsettling reading of citizenship as „the quintessential inherited entitlement

of our time” (Shachar 2008: 146). While other birthright entitlements have largely been discredited,

she argues that current citizenship regimes entail an inherent „moral weakness”, since „the outsider

status is due to circumstances beyond the individuals’ control: where and to whom they were born”.

Her position is strengthened by the observation of the evolution of immigration and naturalisation

laws in favour of the global elite, disprivileging the undesirable outsiders. This „inherited property

dimension of citizenship” is a mechanism of „legitimising distinctions not only between jurisdictions,

but also between vastly unequal opportunities” (ibidem:140-141), whose function can be interpreted

to safeguard the reproduction of the global dominant13. How then, we may ask again, can citizenship

hold the promise of emancipation for the dominated?

It has to be acknowledged that citizenship, as a political category, has historically been an instrument

of state power mobilised in exclusionary practices separating insiders from undesirable outsiders, but

also a „core component of projects of cultural homogenisation” in the nation forming process

(Delanty 2008:69) and later: the assimilationist policies of communist regimes applied to the Roma

are a recent case in point. For Isin, „citizenship is that particular point of view of the dominant, which

constitutes itself as a universal point of view” (Isin 2002:275). Ignoring the contribution of citizenship

in producing categories of subordinated subjects is occulting the Janus face of citizenship and the

dynamics of inclusion / exclusion citizenship arrangements set in motion, as well as possible paths of

resistance which subordinated groups may have taken against these exclusionary practices. While

engaged political scientists privilege a normative perspective which advocates for practices

advancing inclusive citizenship for the Roma, the question becomes more challenging if we

11

We will see later how the focus on the individual facilitates the depoliticisation of citizenship through

neoliberal „technologies of citizenship”. 12

Think of the controversies of early colonists on the American continent about whether the Native had a soul

or not. 13

The jus sanguinis principle of citizenship transmission in some states completes the picture in a rather

unsettling way, since citizenship would then be the legitimiser of the reproduction of global domination along

ethnic lines.


March 29th, 2015

11

hypothesise that the exclusion / inclusion binary may be complicated by yet other dynamics away

from the state. I will illuminate my point by proposing two observations stemming from the empirical

realm.

The first example I will use is the observed practice of electoral bribing occurring in some of the

Roma communities, more specifically the cases in which Roma voters have collectively nullified their

votes by placing their option on both candidates in the decisive round of mayoral elections, thereby

effectively renouncing one of their citizenship rights. What readings could we offer of this practice?

While it has been asserted that these cases reveal increased vulnerability to manipulation and lack of

political awareness (Pajić 2012:32-37; NDI 2009), explanations which I consider excessively simplistic

and imbued with culture-blindness and paternalism, I propose that this type of electoral behaviour

could signify a conscious retreat from the institutions of the dominating Gadjé, performed as a form

of „shmekeria”14 which attempts at reversing the power relations, since it leaves the candidates

rather powerless in front of this subterfuge. While this practice may perhaps be interpreted as

„subversive citizenship”, my own intake is to see it as a strategy of resistance15 which effectuates

simultaneously a movement away from the established political system of the Gadjé. Why

„resistance” and not „citizenship”? Yoav Peled unpacks modern citizenship as historically and

conceptually dependent on three essential characteristics: membership in a political community

transcending other memberships; mutual responsibility between all members, manifested by the

state; equality of rights guaranteed to all who are considered citizens. Subsequently, he posits that

„if any of these features is absent, or is weakened beyond a certain point, we are no longer in the

realm of citizenship, but of some form of subjecthood” (2008:100). It isn’t difficult to problematise

the presence of the three attributes of citizenship in the case of the Roma: very simplistically put,

clan membership tends to transcend the national one or replace it altogether16; in Eastern Europe,

states representatives17 periodically waver the state’s responsibility towards Roma citizens in virtue

of them being „a European responsibility”; equality of rights may be guaranteed formally to Roma

citizens, but the practice reveals persistent inequalities in accessing rights.

On a more extreme note, it should be explored to what extent some of the most marginal Roma

groups may have adapted their ways of life simply to avoid any dealings with the state, seen as an

instrument of Gadjé control and subordination of the Roma. It is wholly possible that this dynamic of

self-exclusion did not happen in a void, but rather in the continuation and as a consequence of

exclusion mechanisms engineered by the dominant groups. However, some interpretations of

ethnographic accounts have gone more in the direction of a cultural explanation, advancing that

Roma values are essentially illegitimate in the eyes of the state: „Nation states as particular

discursive systems are based on a relationship between people and territory, on the idea of central

power and on citizenship, on disciplined adherence to these systems. The Roma do not adhere to

these principles either discursively, or in action. Their identity is not related to a fixed territory, but to

14

Turkish word present in many of the Balkanic cultures which have been under Ottoman rule, signifying

deceiving, cunning, cheating, and celebrated in popular culture as a sign of superiority to the person one tries

to deceive. 15

I have developed this point further in my PhD thesis (Ivasiuc 2014:124-125). 16

The Gabor from Transylvania, for example, speak of the „nația rromane rroma” (the nation of the Romani

Roma) when they refer to their clan (Olivera 2012:168). 17

In a de-reifying move concerning the „state”, I stress here the fact that behind state structures, there are

bureaucrats, who are themselves socialised in particular cultural frames which reflect in their decisions. A

„state” decision or statement should therefore be contextualised in the cultural frame conducive of its

production.


March 29th, 2015

12

groups of people, they resist central leadership, they resist education and wage labour as instruments

of repression. Thus, the central “cultural values” that Roma would claim as an “ethnic group” to

support their “way of life” are not legitimate, as their way of life is excluded from the discursive

system of the populations they live among” (Engebrigtsen 2014). Hence, „[t]he Roma are struggling

to secure a place outside state power not by resisting but by evading it”. While I would strongly

qualify the statement by advancing that some Roma groups may seek to evade state power, while

some others may position themselves differently, and by proposing a more dynamic view on „the

central cultural values”, which are perpetually subjected to change, this perspective offers food for

thought about the relevance of „citizenship” and of the state to some Roma groups.

Perhaps emblematic, along this line of reasoning, is the second example I will propose: the case of

Roma without identity papers18. Although it is widely assumed that either bureaucratic lockdown and

poverty (the benevolent explanation) or neglect, chaotic lifestyle19 and a general lack of awareness in

their case (the paternalistic explanation with cultural racist overtones) is conducive to their

effacement from the citizenship status induced by the lack of identity papers, a historically grounded

hypothesis one could advance is that the experience of deportation, as well as centuries of

domination by the Gadjé, within and outside of their state structures, has made some of the Roma

weary of maintaining visibility in front of the state and brought about practices of total self-

effacement from the state panopticon and, more generally, a retreat from and a refusal to deal with

Gadjé institutions. This hypothesis, however, needs to be explored empirically, in an attempt to

capture the emic perspective of these groups on their relation to the Gadjé and the state.

Seen the „ugly” face of citizenship as mechanism of exclusion of others, one may question the

promises of emancipation which many scholars advocate in the pursuit of citizenship by

subordinated groups. Anthropological insights that cultural practices of exclusion precede their

reflection in legal arrangements leaves one to wonder if formal access to citizenship rights

necessarily ends exclusionary practices rooted historically and culturally and happening far from the

domain of law and mostly unhindered by it: putative access to formal citizenship may occult the lack

of substantive citizenship in practice. Questioning the emancipatory promise of citizenship is all the

more relevant in light of the history of Roma who have been subjected to slavery. Their

enfranchisement a century and half ago contained the promise of emancipation and acquisition of

full citizenship rights; nevertheless, their subordination continued unimpeded, hinting that the locus

of Roma domination in Gadjé societies resides elsewhere than in legal arrangements or formal access

to citizenship status.

From the impasse of EU citizenship to the promise of a micropolitics of social change

18

This discussion is not about the stateless Roma who lost citizenship status in the migratory project they or

their families have undertaken, but about the Roma who live within each state without proper identity papers.

In Romania, there are currently probably only a few thousand Roma individuals without any form of identity

papers left, due to the implementation of PHARE (pre-accession) projects aimed at the inclusion of the Roma;

however, in the past, this group, subjected to the most extreme forms of exclusion, was larger (Ivasiuc 2014). 19

Sometimes attributed to a „culture of poverty”. The school of thought originating in Oscar Lewis’ study of

Mexican families in the United States (1959) has been criticised because of the modernistic overtones and a

propensity to legitimate victim blaming mechanisms against groups constructed primarily as „poor”.


March 29th, 2015

13

After uncovering some of the criticisms addressed from methodological and theoretical points of

view to the concept of citizenship and its representations in academic theories, I will now turn to

problematise the promises of the paradigm of EU citizenship in the case of the Roma. The last part of

the section will propose some empirically grounded considerations, arguing in favour of a shift

towards a micropolitics of social change as purposeful lens for elucidating representations and

practices of political belonging and the agency of grassroots Roma. Interpreting political action as an

attempt to improve the social position of a group, I propose, in the second part, to shift to a

perspective which takes into account the dynamics of social change in which Roma groups engage at

the grassroots level.

Citizenship in the neoliberal era of EU governance

European citizenship is questioned and challenged by the abundant practices of exclusion of the

Roma from the mobility regime on which European citizenship itself is founded (Squire 2011). The

sense that the Roma „[encroach] upon the EU right of free movement” underlines the contradictions

inherent to EU citizenship, by making graduations of citizenship apparent and invalidating „the

acclaimed ideal political and economic qualities of EU space” (Çağlar and Mehling 2013:159,163).

In the relatively recent securitisation of migration in Europe (van Munster 2009), the Roma constitute

a case in point as they are increasingly represented as a threat on a multiplicity of levels, subjected to

unequal treatment, exclusion and expulsion practices in Western European states, regardless of their

formal membership in another EU state. The trend to securitise the Roma implies that they are

increasingly governed through securitising narratives, instruments and practices (van Baar 2013,

2014, 2015a, 2015b), revealing „illiberal practices in liberal regimes” (Bigo and Tsoukala 2008). This

produces the Roma not as second rang, but as third rank EU citizens20, oftentimes pushing them

outside of the boundaries of EU citizenship through the enactment of arbitrary expulsions which do

not conform to the rules applied to other EU citizens (Çağlar and Mehling 2013:168).

The neurotic insistence on security and the emergence of what has been called the „neurotic citizen”

(Isin 2009) has shifted the order of political priorities in rather ambivalent ways, since „security is a

citizenship right, yet at the same time security presides over citizenship” and the nexus of citizenship

and security works towards the exclusion of „the dangerous class”, constituted as non-citizens

(Guillaume and Huysmans 2013:3-4). In opposition, the „good” citizen is constructed as the „low risk

individual”, but its subjection to increasingly complex mechanisms of surveillance contributes to

stripping off its citizen rights, in the name of ensuring its right to security. With the rise of the „risk

society”21, the propensity to pose a threat (to whatever may be considered important) is a new

criterion of exclusion from citizenship, and the Roma are particularly vulnerable to this kind of

exclusion and the inscription in states of emergency. The Italian case, with the declaration of a

„nomad emergency” in 2008 as first action of the newly elected Berlusconi government, is

emblematic in this sense.

As Ruth Lister observes in her unpacking of „inclusive citizenship”, „what is striking is the disjuncture

between the inclusionary philosophy of critical citizenship theory and the increasingly exclusionary

stance adopted by many nation-states towards „outsiders”, as we witness an anti-(im)migrant

backlash reinforced by the securitisation of migration” (Lister 2008:54). To what possible readings

20

The second rank would comprise the non-Roma nationals of new member states. 21

For a critique of theories of „risk society”, see Isin 2009.


March 29th, 2015

14

does this disjuncture open itself? Must we read in it the failure of the political category of citizenship

as something attempting to be more than identity based membership? Is this regression of sorts to

identity politics tributary of the demise of „inclusive citizenship” and other idealistic conceptions?

Does it signify a progressive reduction of citizenship to its formal character and a negation of its

substantive promise? What kinds of transformation of citizenship can we glimpse behind such

„deprivation of citizenship” (Mantu and Guild 2013)? When rights derived from citizenship implode in

such dramatic ways, is it still productive to apply the citizenship frame, or would it be more fertile to

shift our lens towards other perspectives?

On the EU agenda, one can find recurrent mention to „active citizenship” as a desirable ideal to be

attained. „Active citizenship”, Niamh Gaynor (2009) argues, arrived „as a salve to many of the social

ills of our time. Emphasizing citizen's own responsibilities, and espousing values of solidarity,

community, and neighbourliness, active citizenship embodies all that is good, rendering it somewhat

immune from criticism”. He further argues that „active citizenship, as it is currently promoted by state

and select civil society organizations alike, substitutes self-help for redistribution and self-reliance for

state accountability”, in a progressive movement of transformation of collective demands and

struggles into schemes of self-governance. If the onus is on the individual to change her own

situation, then failure to become an „active citizen” through improving one’s life conditions is no

longer imputable to the state22. The syntagm emerges in the trail left by the state in its retreat in the

neoliberal era.

Could we perhaps speak of a movement of depoliticisation of citizenship, with the emergence of

neoliberal funding schemes made available by EU bureaucracies for the advancement of „active

citizenship23”? Could this „activation” of the individual be read as a neoliberal technology of

citizenship (Cruikshank 1999) in which the focus lies on individual responsibility rather than the state

or collective political mobilisation, and through which the interests of government and the governed

are indirectly harmonised, thereby leading to the pacification of citizens’ struggles and the

depoliticisation of citizenship? Dagnino offers an illuminating reading of the transformations of the

notion of citizenship in the neoliberal era; she contends that „citizenship” „has been appropriated

and re-signified in various ways by dominant sectors and the state. Thus, reflecting the effects of

neoliberalism, citizenship has begun to be understood and promoted as mere individual integration

into the market” (Dagnino 2008:63). For the Roma, this shift has engendered a „graduated citizenship

in which preexisting racializing and biopolitical schemes – which had already been inscribed onto

Romani populations under communist rule – have been reinforced, reshaped, and intersected by new

modes of governance that differentially value population groups according to market mechanisms”

(van Baar 2009:29). In a reverse movement, Trehan speaks of the „marketisation” of Roma rights in

the context of the rupture between Roma NGOs and the grassroots (Trehan 2009:65).

The embeddedness of this new syntagm emerged from the EU bureaucracies in neoliberal funding

schemes on which most of the large Roma NGOs base their activity problematises the role which the

formal segment of Roma civil society may play in fostering political resistance and struggles for the

22

For an incorporation of the „active citizenship” rhetoric by the European Roma Grassroots Organisation

(ERGO), see van Baar 2011:251-252. The way in which the ERGO defines the notion exemplifies the

depoliticisation of citizenship, with a disproportionate focus on the individual responsibility to „empower”

oneself. For a critique of „empowerment” narratives in development, see Ivasiuc 2014:48-51. 23

Taking in Nic Craith’s point that „[l]ike culture, citizenship is an active rather than a passive process”

(2004:290), the syntagm could be considered a pleonasm; at any rate, the juxtaposition of the two indicates

the shift of the enactment of citizenship away from rights and towards a paradigm of volunteer participation.


March 29th, 2015

15

political rights of the Roma. As it has been argued by other observers of the modes of functioning of

Roma NGOs (Kóczé and Trehan 2009; Kóczé 2012; Kóczé and Rövid 2012), these organisations are

sometimes constrained by the environment in which they operate24 to become mere service

providers to Roma communities, operating „social inclusion” programmes within the rigid frames

designed by funding agencies. At any rate, in the world of NGOs, „active citizenship” risks to

comfortably install itself as a fund-collecting buzzword rather than a principle structuring strategies

of political mobilisation and activism.

Finally, could we not speak of a certain perverse and paradoxical contribution of the insistance on

citizenship, as individual rather than the collective link to the state, to the depoliticisation of issues of

inequality and marginalisation? These forms of subjecthood require a process of cognitively rooting

collectivities, not individuals, in patterns of historic subordination, and demand political solutions

anchored in collective mobilisation. The focus of citizenship on individual belonging marries strangely

well into the family of neoliberal discourses depoliticising Roma issues by laying the emphasis on

individual lacks and unsuitabilities rather than historical processes of deepening inequality and by

subsequently blocking forms of collective struggle for recognition and redistribution. Analysing the

Roma in terms of citizenship, moreover, risks to essentialise them as the perpetual non-citizens,

especially if observation is not sufficiently fine-tuned to other forms of political belonging and

resistance the Roma may deploy in their daily practice. Perhaps it is not coincidental that the terms

which have been advanced in relation to the study of citizenship in the case of the Roma are often

defined by the negative. „Partial citizenship” of women in a Roma community of Portugal (Casa Nova

2012), „imperfect citizenship” of Roma in Italy (Sigona and Monasta 2006), these adjonctions point to

the inadequacy of the category in itself and the need for qualification, in reference to a presupposed

„total” or „perfect” citizenship. The perverse reading which such labeling may encourage, in the

paradigmatic shift from collective struggles to mechanisms for the self-disciplining of the individual,

is the inadequacy of the Roma themselves to a nearly sanctified, inescapable, normative political

modernity.

The advance of neoliberalism contributes to the depoliticisation of „citizenship” by breaking

collective identities into individual units and rendering collective struggles irrelevant compared to the

endeavour of individual „empowerment”, activation and responsibilisation (read: self-disciplining).

To these dimensions, neoliberalism adds the exacerbation of economic adequacy: if neoliberalism

presupposes the modelling of the state on the example of the profit-seeking firm and the remaking

of individuals to „specks of human capital” (Brown 2010:97), one may rightfully wonder which

directions, theoretically and empirically, „citizenship” discourses may take. The focus on the

economically able transforms citizens into consumers and further delegitimises the voices of the

economically deprived. In the case of the Roma, the focus on the right to free movement of citizens

of EU member states economically active within the formal economy, from which derives largely the

current conception of the European citizenship, reduces, rather than expands, the rights of the

destitute strata of the Roma minority in seek of better opportunities in Western countries,

normalising and legitimising their exclusion through the citizenship regime of the EU.

Towards the Roma political subject through a micropolitics of social change

So far I have attempted to uncover the shortcomings, inadequacies and contradictions of the

„citizenship” frame when researching issues of social change among the European Roma. I have

24

For an expansion upon this point see also Ivasiuc 2014, notably pp. 88-90.


March 29th, 2015

16

shown the limits of a culture-blind approach of citizenship research and suggested that robust

grounding in empiric research has the potential of recentering some of the academic debates, as well

as reveal new, scholarly productive pathways through which the Roma shape their political

belonging. Also, I have problematised the liberal conception of citizenship as grounded in the

individual and relativised the relevance and usefulness of the citizenship lens in the neoliberal frame,

stressing some of its potential adverse effects for the European Roma.

If notions of citizenship can be problematic in understanding the Roma political subject, not only

because of the inherent contradictions outlined above, but also because of the multiple de facto

exclusions which they face (both at national and supranational levels), can an analysis of grassroots

politics (or practices which may resemble it) suggest new paths where we might find better suited

vocabularies? Can grassroots Roma practices aimed at bringing about social change inform us on the

representations and mechanisms of political action and on dynamics of belonging to various polities?

I argue the affirmative. For the purpose of the argument, I would like to offer two empiric

foundations and propose them as suggestions for further research: the agency of the Roma „strategic

group” of civil servants at grassroots level and the reactions of the other Roma, and the institution of

kirve / nășie as a practice of sociality seeking to forge transgressive links across ethnic and social

status boundaries.

Through an ethnographic approach, I propose to move from the macropolitics of citizenship to the

micropolitics of belonging and of social change. In my view, this necessary shift of our lens from the

macro- to micropolitics has three merits. First, informing us on the micropolitical dynamics of Roma

at the grassroots, who are generally perceived as incapable or unwilling of conducting political action

in the classical sense, will contribute to bringing into the spotlight the agency of the non-militant

Roma, painfully underresearched25. Second, an empirically grounded perspective of the micro level

will necessarily reveal cultural practices and illuminate their meanings, thereby potentially suggesting

other ways of being political and new, more culturally adequate concepts and frames. Third, such a

shift will contribute to de-essentialising the victimhood status to which most political science studies

tend to confine „the Roma”, by revealing the strategies that these groups put in practice daily in

order to transcend their subordination.

First, I will mobilise the analysis of what I identified in my dissertation (Ivasiuc 2014) as a „strategic

group” at grassroots level and indicate ways in which this group engages in building „bonding capital”

across community boundaries with development actors, inscribing themselves and their families in a

project of social mobility. The argument which I offered, drawing extensively upon Olivier de Sardan’s

work on the development encounter as methodological focus for the analysis of development

processes (Olivier de Sardan 2005), is that local Roma actors harness development programs of

various NGOs to the advancement of a collective social mobility project. What is crucial, however, is

that these collectivities tend to be constructed and structured around kinship ties26.

The example I will use is that of a grassroots Roma NGO from the North of Romania, whose strategies

were observed during the implementation of the second component of a project using the

25

Apart from anthropology and ethnologic approaches in applied research, other academic disciplines devote

relatively little attention to the agency of the Roma at grassroots level. Chapter two of my PhD dissertation

provides a more in depth discussion on the framing of the Roma as victims, which is closely linked to this blind

spot. 26

Actually, a simple glance at the kinship ties among various individuals engaged in the formal side of the

Romani movement will also reveal that these are much more prevalent than in the non-Roma formal civil

society sector, indicating cultural patterns whose significance still needs to be ethnographically unearthed.


March 29th, 2015

17

community development approach27. For this component, the implementing organisation,

„Împreună” Agency for Community Development, headquartered in Bucharest, had selected partner

NGOs in the counties in which the project took place. In the county, the only organisation which

fulfilled the minimum criteria established was recently founded, but was evaluated as having a good

potential to develop and become a relevant actor at the regional level. The role of the NGO was to

work together with the local initiative groups in community development, build their capacity to act

together and to negotiate with the local authorities, assist them in implementing local projects and

conduct advocacy at the county level.

In the community of C, there was already a local organisation. It had 15 members, most of all related

through kinship, out of whom one was a local elected counsellor28, two were health mediators, one a

school mediator and one a Romani language teacher. They were all visibly and significantly more

prosperous and enterprising than the rest of the community. Some of the members of the family had

construction firms, a mini groceries store and stable employment. Because some of them were

employed by the municipality on civil servant positions created for support to Roma communities, or

counsellors involved in local decision making, they were very well linked with the local government

and, although there were regular conflicts with some of the non-Roma within the municipality’s

apparatus, adopted a cooperative approach with the non-Roma in power positions. Also, at national

level, they had links with Roma activists in Bucharest who regularly liaised with them and provided

support. Because of these links and despite the low „professionalisation” level of the organisation in

terms of capacity, they were preferred partners for any development initiatives undertaken by other

Roma NGOs in the community.

However, the organisation lacked in one respect: its links with the more destitute segments of the

Roma community were fragile at best. There were tensions and the poorer Roma made frequent

allegations as to the self-interested nature of the organisation’s involvement in Roma related

projects. Gossip channels were directed against this family and their legitimacy to work in the name

of the community was contested. They did not want to „have anything to do” with the organisation.

In turn, members of the organisation complained that the other Roma, the poor ones, were never

grateful for anything they did for them, and that they were envious of their family’s achievements.

The encounter between the selected NGO and the local organisation29 created tensions: the local

NGO contested the legitimacy of an organisation coming from outside the community and refused to

help the facilitator to get in contact with key stakeholders within the municipality. It became

apparent that without the support of this organisation, well engrained within the local decision

making formal and informal networks, the implementation of the project was going to be impossible.

However, if a consensus was to be found, the most destitute segments of the community would not

want to be involved in the project. The choice was to either try to forge links with the organisation in

order to secure entrance to significant decision making individuals within the municipality, who could

advance the goals of the project, or to work with the rest of the community and risk to fail the

implementation of the local project.

The members of the local organisation acted in such ways as to become significant, unavoidable

partners in the project. Thus, the activity within the project was entirely reshaped and based on the

27

I have detailed the logics of the project and its implementation in my dissertation (Ivasiuc 2014:156-189). For

a more detailed account of the case summarised here, see pages 220-222. 28

Subsequently, three more members of the extended family were elected counsellors. 29

The local organisation did not fulfill the minimum criteria set by „Împreună”, so it could not be selected to

participate formally in the project.


March 29th, 2015

18

participation and cooperation with the local organisation. The members of the organisation

defended its privileged position at local level and brokered a deal which was likely to strengthen its

position and increase the probability of accessing resources. During the project, the county level NGO

supported it and submitted requests for institutional support from the Open Society Institute

Budapest for both organisations. In practice, the local organisation gained access to the network of

development „brokers” involved in the project, and strengthened its position by building alliances

with other Roma NGOs. In this particular situation, the result of the intervention was the

reaffirmation and strengthening of the position of the strategic group of Roma civil servants in the

community, through the institution they had formed. The influence they already held in relationship

with the local authorities facilitated the sidetracking of the project, which shows that the strategy of

Roma civil servants to build networks with the public authorities can be rewarding in the context of

access to development resources.

What I would like to underline in this case is how certain Roma at local level mobilise development

resources to the advancement of their families’ project of upward social mobility and manage to

sidetrack and appropriate interventions in order to strengthen their position and increase their

access to resources, forming interest groups whose foundation lies in kinship ties. By using kinship as

a resource, they secure civil servants / counselor positions in strategies recalling monopolistic

practices. They rely mostly on patron-client relationships with non-Roma in powerful positions to

help other members of their extended families reach positions of interest. In exchange, they are

expected to intervene in the Roma community as informal delegates of the local authorities and they

are instituted as representatives of the Roma. Their privileged position with regards to access to

resources, however, problematises their role as „social inclusion brokers” for the Roma. The

profoundly egalitaristic values of many Roma, expressed in an „ethics of sharing” (Stewart 1997:75),

put pressure on the families which engage in social mobility by means of gossip and complicate their

work as health or educational mediators in the community. We can see here a micropolitics of both

groups: on one hand, the better-off family seeks to improve and strengthen its power within the

local authorities and, beyond this level, in networks of Roma „development brokers”, by positioning

themselves as sole legitimate representatives of the Roma community; on the other hand, the most

destitute segments resort to destabilisation tactics and deny the representation legitimacy of Roma

families engaged in social ascension.

In my view, what this account suggests is how finely striated political action within a single Roma

community can be, and how inadequate the macro lens on citizenship, belonging and political action

is to detect such fine-tunings in various strategies of social change. A closer look at these dynamics in

the context of social inclusion policies and development projects would reveal the various social

logics which inform the action of different segments of the same community, as well as patterns of

social change in which various Roma groups engage.

The second account I would like to explore in this section is the place of ritual kinship (kirve / nășie30)

in shaping strategies of social mobility of the Roma. I think that this institution has not been explored

sufficiently as a frame for the micropolitics of social change. I would like to propose that the

institution of cross-ethnic ritual kinship relationships, in which a non-Roma is called upon to play to

the role of godfather / godmother to a Roma child, is mobilised by many Roma from different groups

30

The ties between godparents and the family of the baptised child. For an example of kirve (in Romanian:

nășie) relations in a Transylvanian community, see Fosztó 2007:95 and following.


March 29th, 2015

19

as a strategy of transgressing ethnic and social status boundaries31. Socio-economic interests32

structure the choice of a non-Roma godfather / godmother, since (s)he is expected to play the role of

a sponsor, support the child’s family when in need and be an important contact point within the

dominant group: „[t]he godfather should be the protector and sponsor of the godchild; his door

should be open at all times to receive him/her; he should not forget to offer gifts on his godchild’s

birthday and name-day, and he should be willing to meet occasional requests from his godchild for

small amounts of money or other trinkets” (Fosztó 2007:96-97; see also pp. 111 and 127).

From a micropolitics perspective, this institution could be seen not only as an attempt at gathering

social capital and forging links with the economically dominant, but also as a micropolitics of

recognition and, simultaneously, of redistribution. If, with Dagnino, we see citizenship struggles as

„the right to define what we want to be members of”, „citizenship is no longer confined to the

relationship between the individual and the state, but becomes a parameter for all social relations”,

„bringing an ethical dimension to social relations” (2010:104-105). Through the institution of kirve /

nășie, regulated by rules putting respect and generosity at the core of social relations, some Roma

oblige non-Roma, in a piecemeal way, to acknowledge their humanity through the ties they are

encouraged to create with Roma families, to recognise their legitimate belonging to a community

forged through these types of social ties, and to redistribute material benefits (albeit in limited

manner) through such channels. Thus, they become political, in that by forging these social ties with

the dominant they question the naturalness of the hierarchies producing them as socially inferior

and excluded from social contact with them, they expose the arbitrariness of the foundations of the

social order and invite other types of ties into the relationship. With Isin, we may contend that these

acts are not political „in the way being political [is] envisaged by their dominant others, citizens.

Rather, these acts [redefine] the ways of being political by developing symbolic, social, cultural, and

economic practices that [enable] them to constitute themselves as political agents under new terms,

taking different positions in the social space than those in which they were previously positioned” (Isin

2002:275-276). They enact power from below by opening up new possibilities to establish

themselves not as „Gypsies” suffused with negative stereotypes, but as ritual kin, therefore eliciting

another kind of gaze from the Gadjé than the one which constitutes them as dominated. They forge

new possibilities of belonging and of being political by making claims. These practices are neither

political claims in the name of the Roma as abstract subject, nor individual claims. They are pragmatic

claims for new socialities between Roma and non-Roma families, a social unit both culturally

meaningful for the Roma and within immediate grasp33.

31

It is noteworthy that Lockwood finds that this form of „fictive” kinship is practiced by the Muslim Bosnians

with Christians or with better-off Muslims, exclusively to forge links across „major social boundaries”

(Lockwood 1979). 32

A very interesting case is the underage marriage of King Cioabă’s daughter in 2003, with a former Romanian

minister of interior as godfather of the couple; this event spurred international critique and a major scandal in

Romania. Following the intervention of Baroness Emma Nicholson against the marriage, King Cioabă invited her

to be the godmother of the future children issued from the marriage. This shows how the institution can serve

not only socio-economic interests, but also mediate conflicts. For a complete account of the event, see Fosztó

2007:203-207. 33 Granted, this will not alter power dynamics at macro level or show any immediate dramatic improvements

for the whole Roma population. But it is by gradually opening other possibilities that the field of the possible is

altered. The strength of a micropolitics approach, if we side with Deleuze and Guattari, is that it makes

perceptible what macropolitics cannot grasp, the „quanta flows”, the „molecular escapes” from omnipotence

(Deleuze and Guattari 2005[1987]:216-218) through which resistance is enacted.


March 29th, 2015

20

These two examples illustrate how, if we shift the perspective from the macro to the micro level and

embed the analysis in ethnographic accounts, we may find units of relevance which can be

significantly more productive than the state or suprastate levels. It is because of the place of kinship

ties among the Roma and their historical embeddedness in local Gadjé societies that it might prove

more fertile to focus the analysis of their political agency on this unit, and not on levels which are

much more distant to be acted upon from the „grassroots” in ways described by classical citizenship

studies.

The hints offered in this section for a rooting of Roma „citizenship” in grassroots practices come to

support the suggestion of developing a „less dramatic notion of politics” (van Baar 2011:236). But

what I propose by mobilising an anthropological approach to the issue is also to root this notion of

politics in cultural practices observable at grassroots level and modulate it by using a micropolitics

approach. Through such an approach, the vocabularies of social change and resistance open up new

possibilities to enrich the debate on the Roma as political subject.

Conclusions

In this paper, I have interrogated the promises and dead-ends of approaching the Roma political

subject in terms of „citizenship”. In the first part of the paper, I have suggested that the culture-

blindness of citizenship studies and their insufficient or superficial grounding in empiric research are

likely to occult more than they illuminate: such accounts revolve around modulations of

„citizenship”, arguing that the Roma are partly, imperfectly, in graduated ways or not at all citizens,

but failing to address the issue of the relevance of the concept itself in front of these

„imperfections”. Neither the political culture of the societies to which the Roma groups belong, or

the representations and practices of the Roma themselves, articulated in culturally relevant ways,

have been brought into political science debates in order to illuminate some of the dynamics

explored.

As a result, essential inflections and normativities embedded in the concept of „citizenship” have not

stricken many political scientists as problematic, or even as slightly irrelevant. I have shown, for

example, how the focus on the relationship which citizenship installs between the state and the

individual might prove irrelevant for some Roma groups who might wilfully evade state power and

privilege group ties rather than individual freedom. The oppressive side of state power, which, I

think, many Roma have experienced, suggests that it is relevant to question whether the Roma

themselves see, in a „reconciled” relationship with the state, a promise for emancipation; whether

they do, or are likely to mobilise resources for such a project; and whether they would readily

embark on it, instead of using other, culturally familiar strategies to improve their standing in society

(or to evade being subordinated to it). Might it be our own ethnocentric lack of imagination blocking

from our view other ways of being political than the ones our societies take for universal?

The last part of the paper has started by questioning the relevance and productivity, for the Roma, of

the EU citizenship lens in a neoliberal Europe in which security concerns precede citizenship rights

and the market logic transforms citizens in depoliticised consumers. These problematisations call for

new approaches and perhaps a fresh look at the Roma political subject from new perspectives. Thus,

the last section has been an attempt at opening up new conceptions of being political and seeking

change which the Roma may articulate at grassroots level. Through ethnographic accounts of


March 29th, 2015

21

strategies and tactics taking place at the local level, within and across ethnic and social status

boundaries, I have attempted to indicate that underneath all the citizenship talk, there are other

perspectives to be explored in a micropolitics of social change. These perspectives would not only be

more respectful of the diversity of humans in articulating explicit or implicit political projects, but

also scholarly productive, signalling our engagement in a project of intellectual decolonisation. The

analysis invites caution in prescribing Gadjé conceptual categories as panacea to Roma subordination

and exclusion and warns against such prescriptions, especially when our knowledge and

understanding of the Roma, beyond the complexity of the research object in itself, are so limited.

Also, the analysis is an invitation to vary the focus of political science accounts by supplementing the

analysis of the formal side of the Romani movement, with its familiar vocabularies of citizenship and

human rights, with alternative articulations of being political engineered by Roma groups at the

grassroots. What lies behind familiar vocabularies is what still needs to be unearthed.

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