New label no progress: institutional racism and the persistent segregation of Romani students in the Czech Republic

The over-representation of Romani children in special schools in the Czech Republic is well documented and widely condemned. In 2007 the European Court of Human Rights found the state guilty of discrimination against Romani children on the basis of disproportionate placement of children in remedial special schools. In 2015 high numbers of Romani children are still being misdiagnosed with Special Educational Needs and offered a limited and inappropriate education. This article explores the challenges which continue to hamper their successful inclusion in the Czech education system. Using Critical Race Theory as a lens to examine the Czech case, problems with the current policy trajectory are identified. The article shows that institutional racism persists in the Czech Republic, shaping attitudes and practices at all levels. Policy makers demonstrate little recognition of ingrained educational inequalities and Roma continue to be widely perceived as ‘others’ who must learn to adapt to Czech ways rather than as citizens who are entitled to services on their own terms

Hypervisibility and the Limits of Operational Representations: “Ways of Seeing Roma” beyond the Recognition-Redistribution Paradigm

Contradictions: Envisioning European Futures, Council for European Studies Programstatus: publishe

The Limits of Operational Representations: Ways of Seeing Roma beyond the Recognition-redistribution Paradigm

Since 2011, the EU has called upon its member states to step up their efforts to improve the socioeconomic conditions facing many Roma. It has also sought to secure the ethnic representation of the Roma in these efforts. By doing so, the EU has tried to strike a balance between redistribution and recognition: it has recognized the ethnic specificity of this group, but it has also framed the issue as one that requires a socioeconomic solution. Using insights from frame analysis, visual theory and governmentality studies, we argue that the EU’s balancing act between recognition and redistribution has its limits. Current redistribution policies may be open to forms of group representation, but the deeper operational representations which underpin that openness still conceptualize the Roma in restricted ways. These operational representations determine how the Roma become publicly ‘visible’ and ‘governable’. In this article, we speculate about a possible trajectory out of this impasse and argue in favor of a repertoire of representation that allows for more fluid and contestable images of the Roma.status: publishe

Contained mobility and the racialization of poverty in Europe: the Roma at the development–security nexus

This paper starts from the observation that, since the collapse of eastern European state socialism, the Roma have become the subject and target of Europe-wide development programs and discourses, while, at the same time, they have been problematized in terms of social, public and national security. Due to the ways in which development and security have ambiguously come together in Europe’s recent history, I will argue that the living conditions of the poorest among the Roma have not only worsened, but also, and more fundamentally, the divide between Europe’s rich and poor has become seriously racialized and almost unbridgeable. I explain how the bio- and geopolitical conditions under which development and security have merged in Europe’s engagement with the Roma have led to a situation in which the official aim of Roma-related development programs – the improvement of their living conditions and life chances – tends to result in a dreadlock