The Perpetual “Outsiders”: Romanian Policies Targeting Roma between 1859-1945
Abstract
This dissertation examines the driving forces of antiziganism/ antigypsism/ antițiganism in Romania and the means to which they violently manifested in Romanian society from the unification of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia in 1859 to the end of the Second World War in 1945. The study moves away from the perception of mass violence as an explosion of violence and brutality towards a more developed understanding of how societies violently target and suppress individuals deemed as “unwanted” and “the other”. More than another study of a “forgotten Holocaust”, The Perpetual “Outsiders” expands our understanding of how we conceptualize genocide as a process rather than an event epitomized by the Holocaust. The work expands our understanding of the persecution of the Roma as a spatial or temporal event and frames it as a phenomenon that has culminated as a result of instances of violence stemming from regional circumstances.
Antiziganism is inexplicably intertwined with the social and cultural processes of Romanian nation-state formation. Throughout Romanian history, Roma have been subjugated, marginalized, and persecuted. The Romanian government and its collaborators used violence to contain, control, and eradicate the group. In a quest to modernize and create a homogenous community of belonging, nation-states target individuals deemed as “inferior” and “unwanted”; particularly those viewed to poses the potential to threaten the stability of the state. Since its unification in 1859, the Romanian state has actively targeted the Roma, first through assimilation, and when such efforts did not bear fruit, through physical isolation. Sown through deep-rooted antiziganist discourses, the Roma were labelled as “less-than”.Public discourses depicted the group as an external factor, “a foreigner” or “an alien” within Romanian society.