Paper Titles & Abstracts

The scrutiny of socio-economic exclusion of the Roma in Central and Eastern Europe brought focus to widespread practices of school segregation of Romani children who are automatically placed in classes for the mentally disabled or shunted into separate and inferior schools and classrooms. It is now widely recognized that such practices adversely affects the educational development of Romani children what in turn dramatically constrains their possibilities to succeed in adult life. Thus far the legislative changes and political commitment to de-segregation and integration measures have delivered limited outputs and outcomes. While national programmes face implementation challenges at the local level, the grass roots initiatives are rarely mainstreamed into wider policy strategies. At the end of the day the status quo remains unchanged.This paper analyzes structural dimensions of de-segregation processes. Building on the policy-design theory it examines how the content of de-segregation measures impacts their implementation on-the-ground. The analysis shows that de-segregation efforts are less impeded by the so-called 'culture of poverty' and low regard for education among impoverished Roma communities, than by the actual design of proposed policies. Data collected from Romania, Hungary and Slovakia shows that de-segregation measures aim to bring children to school without providing for their participation in them. Hence they do not address the 'low expectation' phenomena, the lack of integrated services (i.e. medical assistance, food provisions, language courses, etc.) and socio-economical quandaries affecting Roma children and their families. Such limited 'vision' hinders the impact of de-segregation measures and perpetuates harmful stereotypes.