Paper Short Abstract:

The paper focuses on the way, how antigypsyism inflected refugee assistance to Ukraine Roma refugees in the period after the beginning of war in Ukraine. It is based on deep ethnographic research of the main railway station in Prague, which was a key entrance gate to the CR for Ukraine refugees.

Paper Abstract:

The dealing with Ukrainian Roma refugees at the Prague station has shown accumulated experiences of marginalisation and stigmatisation of Roma, as well as unequal access to the citizenship, legal status, humanitarian aid, which fundamentally differed for those perceived as “whites” and “non-whites”. The paper describes a social history of aid to Ukrainian Roma migrants, primarily through interviews with actors (Roma and Non-Roma, NGO´s, volunteers etc.), media research and ethnography of institutions, and provides a focus to understand how antigypsyism becomes reproduced and normalised. It focuses 1.on the diachronic description of the institutional help to Ukrainian refugees in the Prague´s station and 2. on processes of racialization and ethnic and religious othering of Ukrainian Roma refugees.

In Spring 2022, several thousands of Ukrainian Roma have arrived in the CR. The approach to them has shown the obvious limits of the otherwise unprecedented solidarity with the war refugees from Ukraine that could be observed at the societal level and in terms of state policy. Ukrainian Roma were discriminated already by Czech and Slovak carriers at the Ukrainian-Slovak border. Later they faced various forms of institutional and structural racism. The dual citizenship (Hungarian and Ukrainian) of some was used as an excuse for their residential segregation and for double standards in various aspects of humanitarian assistance. Their marginalised position was rationalised in the political debate and framed as cultural differences and social "inadaptability". This argumentation was built on the historically conditioned discourse against the Roma not only in the CR but across CEE.