Paper long abstract:

Roma urban enclaves can be characterized as social peripheries - localities in which poverty and unemployment are concentrated. The detachment of Roma from the majority group is represented in educational system as well, i.e. in the existence of sub-standard, low demanding basic schools, where Roma pupils prevail. Both phenomenons became a subject of public debates, policies, and in case of schools a subject of international legal disputes too. Until recent times, however, both problems had not been perceived interconnected.

Our paper shows how the existence of socially deprived localities and local educational markets are mutually interconnected. "Roma schools" in the neighborhoods of deprived localities are shaped through (a) institutional conditions, (b) the processes of marketization of education, and, (c) the strategies of both Roma and non-Roma parents. As an unintended consequence, "Roma schools" take part in reproduction of social inequalities and spatial exclusion of Roma in urban space. Thus, the inter-relation between stigmatized space and ethnically segmented educational markets is a key mechanism in reproduction of social inequalities in the context of the researched localities.