dc.rights.license | CC-BY-NC-ND | |
dc.contributor.advisor | van der Lecq, Dr. R | |
dc.contributor.author | Nunen, E.M. van | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2015-08-12T17:00:47Z | |
dc.date.available | 2015-08-12T17:00:47Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2015 | |
dc.identifier.uri | https://studenttheses.uu.nl/handle/20.500.12932/21025 | |
dc.description.abstract | The Roma people are the largest, most marginalized, discriminated against and misunderstood
minority within the EU. Compared to non-Romani populations, they often live in marginal
conditions, have low levels of education, high levels of unemployment and lack basic access to
health-care. Over the past decades many EU policy measures have been implemented to address
these problems which are aimed at improving the socioeconomic status of Roma. To date these
have had only limited effect and the situation of many Roma remains precarious. This paper adopts
an interdisciplinary approach to investigate the reasons of this relative ineffectiveness of
implemented EU policy. Human geography is deployed to look at policies of both national- and
multinational governmental institutions as well as the main drivers of Roma migration. It
investigates Roma migration and an overview is given of the main factors contributing to policy
ineffectiveness. Cultural anthropology looks at Roma identity and analyzes their supposed cultural
unity in order to understand what implications this has for the integration of Roma in the EU. We
conclude that EU implemented policy is largely failing for a number of reasons. First of all, the
integration of both human geographical and cultural anthropological insights show us that policy
often targets Roma as a homogeneous unit, although the European Roma are mixed and diverse
group. Furthermore, there seem to be discrepancies between EU initiatives and the actions taken by
various individual member states and little attention is given to both institutional and non-
institutional discrimination. Finally we argue there is too little communication and -understanding
both between various levels of government, as well as between the people- and institutions that
implement policy and the Roma communities and -individuals they are working for. | |
dc.description.sponsorship | Utrecht University | |
dc.format.extent | 295705 | |
dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | |
dc.language.iso | en | |
dc.title | The EU's Roma 'Paradox' | |
dc.type.content | Bachelor Thesis | |
dc.rights.accessrights | Open Access | |
dc.subject.keywords | Roma, European Union, Gypsy, poverty, policy, identity, discrimination, institutional racism | |
dc.subject.courseuu | Liberal Arts and Sciences | |