Europe and its Roma
Posted by fazeer on 2 July, 2009
There are 15 million Roma living in the world, between 10-12 million of whom live in Europe. They are probably the most discriminated against people in Europe, to the point of being granted asylum in countries such as Canada. Antonio Capello at the Demography Blog has an interesting graph of the distribution of Roma in Europe and the sad day-to-day reality of Roma life:
Roma have always been victims of intolerance, prejudice and discrimination, their presence in Europe is characterised by centuries of persecution,extermination and discriminatory policies. Nowadays, the majority of modern societies continue to show anti-gypsy feelings and to perceive, disseminate or tolerate negative images linked to ROMA who are still considered “different” and not “fully citizen” of their respective countries. As reaction, Roma have developed, as self defense, isolation and diffidence against society and institutions.
There are many successful Roma. Portuguese football player, Ricardo Quaresma is one of them. Unsurprisingly and rather sadly, his fans completely dissociate him from the Roma community and leave their view of the community unchanged.
In the economic study of discrimination, two topics remain largely unexplored. (1) To what extent does the economic well-being of discriminated groups improve when they move to less discriminatory countries (eg. the Roma moving from Czech Rep. to Canada)? (2) What effects does discrimination have on effort, say in acquiring education or integrating within society. On one hand, one could expect that a discriminated group can react by sending their kids to school in a way that they end up better educated than the average, hence compensating for discrimination. On the other, they can resign to unfairness by excluding themselves from society. Quite often, this is what actually occurs.
