Gypsies and Travellers in Housing: the Decline of Nomadism, by David Smith and Margaret Greenfields. Bristol: Policy Press, 2013.

No abstract available

Sovereignty beyond the state::exception and informality in a western european city

This article bridges debates on urban sovereignty and debates on urban informality, to argue that the relationships between sovereignty and informality may not exclusively lie in the way the sovereign state decides to allow or not informality, but in the ways sovereignty is distributed among a range of state and non-state actors. Drawing on fieldwork on the early 2010s management of displaced Romanian Romani families in two emergency camps in the city of Montreuil (France), the article shows how the NGO responsible for managing one camp acted as sovereign power over that camp, allowing a number of informal activities thrived inside the camp. By contrast, inside the other camp, which was managed by another NGO that smoothly implemented state directives, only formal activities were taking place. Building on Dean’s (2010) concept of “disaggregated sovereignty”, the article mobilizes this disjuncture as a case for critically examining the ways the “state of exception” takes shape beyond the state’s grip. A subtext running throughout is the parallel between the first camps for civilians in 19th-century colonized territories, and 21st-century camps for Roma in Europe - both types of camps elicited a state of exception which was partially predicated on camp dwellers’ perceived ethnic/racial homogeneity

Anti-gitanismo, conocimiento racial y amnesia colonial

This intervention brings together insights from race critical theories and historical sociology to provide a framework for understanding the longstanding racism against Romani people across Europe. It directly draws on Picker's 2017 monograph Racial Cities, and argues that in order to understand the racial segregation of Romani people in Europe, racial knowledge and colonial amnesia should be squarely placed at the core of analytical scrutiny and political intervention. The reason for this is that when looking at several cases of urban authorities' actions on Romani people in 21st-century Europe, key similarities can be detected with colonial authories's actions on "natives" in the cities of European empires

La biopolitica della differenza. Un'antropologia delle politiche dei campi nomadi a Firenze

In this article the author focuses on the policies concerning the Roma in Florence, against the background of the recent eruption of exclusionary policy measures targeting Roma in Italy. In the mid-1980s the Tuscan regional council decided to construct urban camps as housing solutions for the Roma fleeing the economic and political dissolution of Yugoslavia. The author draws on the fieldwork he has conducted in Florence in 2007 and 2008, and borrows from Apparudai’s (1996) reflections on the “world of representation” in relation to globalization. He historically dissects the political imagination behind camp policies concerning Roma in Tuscany through the early 2000s. He also shows that in 2007 the fundamental traits of that representation persisted in Florentine civil servants’ views and practices vis-à-vis Roma. In the conclusion, the author defines the policy category “nomadism” as the main “political technology” which has allowed urban segregation of Roma in Florence to persist from the mid-1980s. More generally, the author argues that deploying “nomadism” as policy category was the condition under which over the last thirty years a single governmental system has been crystallizing

Racist morbidities: A conjunctural analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic

This article aims to offer a preliminary theorization of some of the on-going effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic on minorities. Drawing on Antonio Gramsci's famous characterization of the crisis as an ‘interregnum’ in which various ‘morbid phenomena’ appear, we suggest that one of the main underpinning logics of the current crisis could be thought of in terms of racist morbidities. Framing the article within Stuart Hall's reading of Gramsci, we discuss two empirical cases: the disproportionate morbid effects of the pandemic on Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) in the UK – that we name ‘political morbidities’, and the Moscow municipality's measures addressing migrant workers during the pandemic – that we name ‘socio-spatial morbidities’. The concept of racist morbidities, we conclude, can be a useful exploratory concept to analyse the current and other moments and structures of crisis

Race and place

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue on Race and Place. Design/methodology/approach The approach used by the authors is to combine an overview of sociological debates on place within a framework that makes the case for a relational approach to race, space and place. Findings The overview provides an account of place in sociology, of the relationality of race and place, and the making of race and place in sociological work. Originality/value The Introduction sets the papers in context, providing a short account of each of them; it also aims to present an argument for attention to race and place in sociology in a setting characterised by racism and reaction. Keywords Racism, Space, Relational, Post-racial, Racializatio

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

Urban informality and confinement: toward a relational framework

In the 21st century, a growing number of people live ‘informal’ lives within fissures between legality and informality. Concomitantly, power relations are increasingly expressed through devices of confinement. While urban informality and confinement are on the rise often occurring simultaneously, scholars have so far studied them separately. By contrast, this article proposes a new framework for analysing urban informality and confinement relationally. It generates new insights into the role of informality in the (re)production of confinement and, vice versa, the role of confinement in shaping informal practices. While these insights are valuable for urban studies in general, the article charts new lines of research on urban marginality. It also discusses how the six articles included in this special issue signal the heuristic potential of this relational framework by empirically examining distinct urban configurations of ‘confined informalities’ and ‘informal confinements’ across the Global North and the Global South

Accuracy of Immunodiagnostic Tests for Active Tuberculosis Using Single and Combined Results: A Multicenter TBNET-Study

The clinical application of IFN-gamma release assays (IGRAs) has recently improved the diagnosis of latent tuberculosis infection. In a multicenter study of the Tuberculosis Network European Trialsgroup (TBNET) we aimed to ascertain in routine clinical practice the accuracy of a novel assay using selected peptides encoded in the mycobacterial genomic region of difference (RD) 1 for the diagnosis of active tuberculosis in comparison with tuberculin skin test (TST), QuantiFERON-TB GOLD In-Tube (Cellestis Ltd., Carnegie, Australia) and T-SPOT.TB (Oxfordimmunotec, Abingdon, UK)