Colonial refractions: the 'Gypsy camp' as a spatio-racial political technology

Camps for civilians first appeared in the colonies. Largely drawing on the literature on colonialism and race, this article conceptualizes the 'Gypsy camp' in Western European cities as a spatio-racial political technology. We first discuss the shift, starting with decolonization, from colonial to metropolitan technologies of the governance of social heterogeneity. We then relate this broad historical framing to the ideas and ideologies that since the 1960s have been underpinning the planning and governance of the ‘Gypsy camp' in both the UK and Italy. We document the 1970s emergence of a new and distinctive type of camp that was predicated upon a racially connoted tension between policies criminalizing sedentarization and ideologies of cultural protection. Given that the imposition of the ‘Gypsy camp' was essentially uncontested, we argue that the conditions of possibility for it to emerge and become institutionalized were both a spatio-racial similarity with typically colonial technologies of governance, and the fact that it was largely perceived as a self-evident necessity for the governance and control of one specific population. We conclude by calling for more analyses on this and other forms of urban confinement in both the Global North and South, in order to account for the increasingly disquieting mushrooming of confining and controlling governance devices, practices and ideologies

A failed Roma revolution: conflict, fragmentation and status quo maintenance in Rome

This article examines novel spaces for Roma political participation that opened up under a right-wing municipal government in Rome between 2008 and 2013. Three channels were created through which Roma could engage with policy-makers and, in theory, make their voices heard: a ‘Mayor’s Delegate for Roma Issues’; a forum for debate among Roma groups and elected representatives in two official camps. Based on in-depth interviews with protagonists of this key period of mobilisation, we evaluate the successes achieved and obstacles faced. In particular, we highlight the differentiations which emerged among Roma actors, concluding that, following an initial period of enthusiasm and cohesion, most participants withdrew, achieving few of their initial goals. While the analysis demonstrates the heterogeneity of Roma groups and interests in this process, it also underlines the constraints created by the external political opportunity structure which ultimately worked to co-opt activists in order to maintain the status quo

Roma and humanitarism in the eternal city

This article examines the recent evolution of Rome's city administration's policies for Roma after the Italian government's declaration of a ‘nomad emergency’. We analyze the policies as they are formulated by the city government and examine ambiguities in their application and their effects in various Roma communities. We focus on two elements, which, we argue, introduce a new political paradigm not only for the capital but for the management of Roma issues in the country generally. By using a human rights discourse and involving new social actors such as the Italian Red Cross, Rome's mayor, Gianni Alemanno, is redefining the Roma issue as a humanitarian problem. This process supports a new form of political representation from within Roma communities. But in contrast to the discourses of both Alemanno and the Roma leadership, we argue that these new developments in practice result in the erosion of Roma citizenship, legitimizing instead experimental forms of segregation within Italian society

The production of informal space: A critical atlas of housing informalities in Italy between public institutions and political strategies

The paper analyses the plurality of urban informal practices that characterize contemporary Italy in the sphere of housing, focusing on its complex connections with a variety of public institutions (e.g. laws, regulations, policies and practices). The paper discusses five cases of urban informality in Italy: the squatting of public housing in Milan; Roma camps in Rome; the borgate romane (large unauthorised neighbourhoods in the capital, which were built in the 1960s and 1970s and which have subsequently undergone a long and complex process of regularization); unauthorised construction, by the middle class, of second homes in coastal areas of Southern Italy; illegal subdivision of agricultural land as a standard mechanism for urban expansion in Casal di Principe, Naples. From these cases emerges a complex picture of hybrid institutions that shape and govern housing informalities. These hybrid institutions are composed of multifaceted networks of actors, policies, practices and rules that exist in tension with each other and contribute to favouring and shaping the production of informal space in different ways (e.g. through their action, inaction and structural features). Against the backdrop of this varied institutional framework, a selective tolerance driven mainly by politically-mediated interests emerges as the distinctive feature of the public approach to housing informality in Italy. The paper aims to develop an innovative research approach to informal housing in Italy by overcoming traditional boundaries between research ‘objects’ and by looking at political uses and forms of institutionalisation that are deployed across housing informalities. By doing so, it also contributes to the literature which analyses informality through the lenses of state theory. Simultaneously, it represents a call for international research to investigate the similarities in the patterns of housing informality – and their multifaceted politics – in Mediterranean welfare states

The production of informal space: A critical atlas of housing informalities in Italy between public institutions and political strategies

The paper analyses the plurality of urban informal practices that characterize contemporary Italy in the sphere of housing, focusing on its complex connections with a variety of public institutions (e.g. laws, regulations, policies and practices). The paper discusses five cases of urban informality in Italy: the squatting of public housing in Milan; Roma camps in Rome; the borgate romane (large unauthorised neighbourhoods in the capital, which were built in the 1960s and 1970s and which have subsequently undergone a long and complex process of regularization); unauthorised construction, by the middle class, of second homes in coastal areas of Southern Italy; illegal subdivision of agricultural land as a standard mechanism for urban expansion in Casal di Principe, Naples. From these cases emerges a complex picture of hybrid institutions that shape and govern housing informalities. These hybrid institutions are composed of multifaceted networks of actors, policies, practices and rules that exist in tension with each other and contribute to favouring and shaping the production of informal space in different ways (e.g. through their action, inaction and structural features). Against the backdrop of this varied institutional framework, a selective tolerance driven mainly by politically-mediated interests emerges as the distinctive feature of the public approach to housing informality in Italy. The paper aims to develop an innovative research approach to informal housing in Italy by overcoming traditional boundaries between research ‘objects’ and by looking at political uses and forms of institutionalisation that are deployed across housing informalities. By doing so, it also contributes to the literature which analyses informality through the lenses of state theory. Simultaneously, it represents a call for international research to investigate the similarities in the patterns of housing informality – and their multifaceted politics – in Mediterranean welfare states