Archive - Conference Papers

The relationship between Roma minorities and the majority populations poses a pressing-and oftentimes combustible-problem for contemporary European countries and their governments. The EU's focus on 'inclusiveness' and the recent adoption of the National Roma Integration Strategies beg the question of how institutions and civil society can, and should, reset the agenda for thinking about Europe's largest minority.This paper seeks to explore the issue of spatial isolation and of the concentration of Roma in segregated neighbourhoods (which typically results in social, political and economic segregation) by looking at five pilot projects on integrated housing that were launched in 2010, and that are now starting to give the first results.The situations of the different municipalities and regions that implemented the projects constitute a sample of situations, from disseminated pockets of exclusion to compact ghettoes. Beyond observing how different custom-tailored projects correspond to the varying local realities, an assessment of the funding sources (a coordination between ERDF and ESF) and of the effects of putting the human element at the centre of housing interventions can help us move away from both a counterproductive Roma nationalism discourse, as well as from ethnicized national policies for 'second class citizens'.