1 Neoliberalism, anti-Gypsyism and the EU’s dream deferred Dr Nando Sigona, Senior Researcher, University of Oxford and Dr Nidhi Trehan, Visiting Fellow, Delhi University Email: nando.sigona@qeh.ox.ac.uk Published in the journal Lignes, n.34, 2011 In the wake of the economic downturn, there have been a number of killings and incidents of violence against Roma, including in Italy, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and the Czech ‘epuďliĐ…‘oŵa are the largest aŶd ŵost ǀulŶeraďle ŵiŶoritLJ iŶ Europe; theLJ suffer raĐial profiling, violence, and discrimination (US Department of State 2009) 1 . In a recent article, in trying to answer the question: why have the Roma become a target and a scapegoat in France today?, the French sociologist Éric Fassin reminds us that the oďjeĐt of phobia is not to be mistaken for its sourĐe aŶd that the edžplaŶatioŶ of politiĐs is of a political nature. 2 These remarks suggest that in order to understand what is happening in the EU in relation to Romani communities, we may need to turn our gaze away from the Roma and try, instead, first to focus on the broader picture of the contemporary EU, an institutional and political construct that has undergone two decades of transition, enlargement and economic and social restructuring, and one that is currently under incredible pressure as a result of financial crisis. This approach is also conducive to reconsider the link between poverty and anti-Gypsyism and historical continuities and discontinuities in current manifestations of anti-Gypsyism, both of which have important implications for social policy making. The EU and the Romani communities While it would be difficult to address at length the complexity and contested nature of these changes, it may be useful to list some of them simply to gauge the scale of what we Europeans have been going through. 3 In the early 1990s, the end of the Cold War resulted in the estaďlishŵeŶt of a Ŷeǁ ǁorld order that fouŶd iŶ the huŵaŶ rights doĐtriŶe oŶe of its ideological pillars; traditional communist and socialist parties began (if they had not already started) the search for new ideological foundations; meanwhile the transition of Central and Eastern European economies to capitalism (in its neoliberal avatar) began. In parallel, in the Western states (as well as in the Central and Eastern ones), we witnessed the restructuring (and downsizing) of post-WWII welfare systems, which had been developed in part as a response to the USSR model. This was coupled with increasing deregulation of industries and the 1 US State Department (2009) reported in Politcs.hu (accessed January 2010): http://www.politics.hu/20100312/us- human-rights-report-on-hungary-highlights-violence-against-roma 2 The article is available at http://theoryculturesociety.blogspot.com/2010/10/eric-fassin-why-roma.html 3 For a thorough discussion, see the introduction to Sigona and Trehan (eds.) Romani Politics in Contemporary Europe: Poverty, ethnic mobilization and the neoliberal order, Palgrave, 2009.