Mobility interrogating free movement: Roma acts of European citizenship

TY - CHAP

T1 - Mobility interrogating free movement

T2 - Roma acts of European citizenship

AU - Aradau, Claudia

AU - Huysmans, Jef

AU - Macioti, P. G.

AU - Squire, Vicki

PY - 2013/5

Y1 - 2013/5

N2 - On 8 June 2008, groups of Roma and Sinti people took to the streets of Rome alongside their supporters and other activists in an attempt to challenge the ‘security package’ passed by the Berlusconi government and those laws and regulations that were increasingly perceived as discriminatory. ‘The Roma people come out of the camps!’ proclaimed the headline of one of Italy’s main daily newspapers, La Repubblica. ‘I campi nomadi’ or ‘camps for nomads’ have been a semantic and spatial fixture of Italian political life since the 1960s, when they were set up in response to the presumed nomadism of Roma populations, particularly those coming from Yugoslavia (Piasere 2006). More recently, Roma camps have come to the attention of European institutions, with the dismantling of the so-called ‘unauthorised’ camps inhabited by the Roma, coupled with evictions and the relocation of some Roma groups to a smaller number of official camps located outside of urban centres. The demonstration, alongside the debates about the ‘campi nomadi’ in Italy, have brought into the limelight the problem of mobility as it pertains to the Roma. A range of different mobilities play out in this site of the 8 June demonstration: the supposedly excessive mobility of the Roma as ‘nomads’; their mobility as European and/or Italian citizens under free movement regulations; their mobility both across national borders and across urban, less visible, boundaries; the immobility enforced by the camps; the forced mobility between camps entailed by continuous evictions and camp closures; and the purported ‘voluntary’ mobility of deportation practices. Questions of physical mobility and immobility appear intertwined with questions of social and political (im)mobility, even as they are often kept separate in debates about European citizenship and freedom of movement.

AB - On 8 June 2008, groups of Roma and Sinti people took to the streets of Rome alongside their supporters and other activists in an attempt to challenge the ‘security package’ passed by the Berlusconi government and those laws and regulations that were increasingly perceived as discriminatory. ‘The Roma people come out of the camps!’ proclaimed the headline of one of Italy’s main daily newspapers, La Repubblica. ‘I campi nomadi’ or ‘camps for nomads’ have been a semantic and spatial fixture of Italian political life since the 1960s, when they were set up in response to the presumed nomadism of Roma populations, particularly those coming from Yugoslavia (Piasere 2006). More recently, Roma camps have come to the attention of European institutions, with the dismantling of the so-called ‘unauthorised’ camps inhabited by the Roma, coupled with evictions and the relocation of some Roma groups to a smaller number of official camps located outside of urban centres. The demonstration, alongside the debates about the ‘campi nomadi’ in Italy, have brought into the limelight the problem of mobility as it pertains to the Roma. A range of different mobilities play out in this site of the 8 June demonstration: the supposedly excessive mobility of the Roma as ‘nomads’; their mobility as European and/or Italian citizens under free movement regulations; their mobility both across national borders and across urban, less visible, boundaries; the immobility enforced by the camps; the forced mobility between camps entailed by continuous evictions and camp closures; and the purported ‘voluntary’ mobility of deportation practices. Questions of physical mobility and immobility appear intertwined with questions of social and political (im)mobility, even as they are often kept separate in debates about European citizenship and freedom of movement.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84924188946&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1017/CBO9781139524025.008

DO - 10.1017/CBO9781139524025.008

M3 - Chapter

AN - SCOPUS:84924188946

SN - 9781139524025

SN - 9781107033962

SP - 132

EP - 154

BT - Enacting European Citizenship

PB - Cambridge University Press

ER -