Paper short abstract:

Roma populations challenge not only citizenship categories, but also those of the ethnographer. Through an ethnography of the relationship between Roma and the Italian health system, this paper discusses the tension between the analysis of the misunderstanding on Roma and the risk of reproducing it.

Paper long abstract:

Several studies on Roma show how these groups constantly challenge the categories of citizenship and rights. But, in the same way, they also challenge anthropology's theoretical and methodological categories.

The relationship between Roma and the health system is the field where this tension is more clearly expressed, as healing is directly involved in biopolitical forms of action.

Security politics concerning the residents of Roma settlements (« campi nomadi ») in Italy show interesting crossings with specific health interventions taken in these urban areas. These same politics are alimented by false assumptions and misunderstandings about social and cultural characteristics of Roma groups ("nomadism", "cultural habits" and others). In this framework, anthropology often struggles with the paradox between the scientific duty of deconstructing these assumptions and the need to take into account their real effects.

This paper proposal relates to an ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Rome, observing the everyday work of a sanitary mobile unit dedicated to Roma settlements and held by the public health system. In a context where politics and security issues are considered "problematic", this case shows how a humanitarian health approach can be held by State not only to "provide help", but also for surveillance purposes and other political instances. Moreover, these actions are very often shaped by the same false assumptions affecting the institutional and public knowledge on Roma.

For such cases, how can medical-political anthropology of public health take into account all the instances and their sources without reproducing the same constant misunderstanding while describing its effects?