Paper short abstract:

My paper focuses on the ethno-political mobilization of Roma as a trans-national diaspora in Central and Eastern Europe, the mechanisms of ghetto-formation and the role of EU in institutionalizing a specific model of ethnic identity based on human rights and minority protection programs.

Paper long abstract:

My paper focuses on the ethno-political mobilization of Roma as a trans-national Diaspora which aimed at creating a common 'imagined community' and political networks capable of obtaining international recognition for Roma as a stateless nation and a non-territorial ethnic group. This process of post-communist ethnic activism was vital for a community dealing with marginalization and racism and it strived for generating political means for fighting the mechanisms which produced second-class citizenship and social discrimination in most CEE countries. My paper focuses on the role European Union has played in institutionalizing a specific model of ethnic identity which was embedded in the pre-accession Copenhagen criteria centered on human rights for minorities and later in post-accession EU communitarian policies regarding national minorities. My aim is to critically analyze the limits of the ethnic model based on the idea of a trans-national Diaspora by exploring on the ground level the way it is appropriated and contested by the Roma living in ghettos. My research question is to what extent has the language of trans-national identity and human rights activism succeeded in mobilizing Roma at the local level when facing brutal displacements and gradual ghettoization? My goal is to analyze the institutionalization of the Roma ethno-politics in the context of the expansion of European Union towards East, the creation of a European Single Market and the implementation of neo-liberal policies (deregulation of economy, extensive privatizations, budgetary discipline, austerity measurements) which have produced new forms of peripherialization of poverty among the Roma.