Differentiating Roma in Glasgow

The above section discussed at length and in detail the varying ways in which Roma have been and are categorised in the Slovak, Czech and British censuses, and the specific historical and political contexts with regard to imagining the nation and its others in which the respective categorisations evolved, were adopted, and came to replace others. How, then, are these different approaches to thinking about ethnicity and, more specifically, to counting or collecting data on Roma, relevant to understanding what I observed during my fieldwork?

4.3.1 An unwelcome setback

Let us return once again to the extract from the fieldwork notes which described an exchange between a support worker at the Groundworks service and Jan Búrik. Briefly, this involved a moment at the end of an advice session when the support worker asked Mr Búrik - as he was about to leave the room - whether he was Rom. When Mr Búrik hesitantly replied that he was "half" Rom, a visibly embarrassed support worker said: "we tick the 'Roma' box since we do not have 'half' here". As I have set out earlier, the question of Mr Búrik's ethnic belonging suddenly created a moment of awkwardness in the room, for which I offered some initial explanations (see 4.1).

A further interpretation of the awkwardness that encroached on a previously smooth and lively session could focus on the variations that exist between the Slovak/Czech and British ways of conceptualising ethnicity and categorising Roma. The differences could be read as providing a historical or cultural-relativist explanation for what would then appear as a 'misguided' approach taken by the Slovak support worker when it came to registering Roma clients in the described advice session - but also in those instances when staff ticked the 'Roma box' (literally on a form or mentally in encounters or conversations) without explicitly asking the service user. From this perspective, one could consider that the staff members who were themselves migrants from Slovakia had applied an approach towards Roma that was more traditionally used in their country of origin; rather than letting service-users self-identify as Roma by, for example, handing them the form, they had attributed being Roma to certain

people based on their 'knowledge' of Roma, 'being able to tell them apart', informed by their long experience of living and working with Roma in Slovakia and in Glasgow.79 Alternatively or additionally, one could consider that Mr Búrik, whose ethnic belonging was questioned here, was wary about having to declare his Roma ethnicity, reminded of the long and often painful history that closely linked data collection on Roma with the administration of violence and inhuman treatment against them in Czechoslovakian and now Czech and Slovak society. Further, we could assume that the awkwardness was caused by the support worker suddenly treading carefully, feeling embarrassed about having to ask the question in the anticipation of potentially causing offense or harm due to such negative personal experiences or collective memories on Mr Búrik's part.

In the following, I will suggest another interpretation of what happened here. Being attentive to boundary making processes I argue that - even though some of the above interpretations might be also relevant - the situation should not be reduced to one evolving between the Slovak support worker and the 'half-Roma' service user whose shared history of difficult relations between majority and minority Slovaks plays out here, somewhat 'imported' from 'back home' to this setting in Glasgow. As I found during my fieldwork, many Groundworks clients I spoke to valued the service highly, in particular for the fact that the service was provided in their native language and by fellow Slovak migrants who could understand many issues they faced as newcomers in Scotland. What seems crucial here, however, is the fact that many of those who self-identified as Roma in our conversations, for example, when mentioning or explaining anti-Roma discrimination and injustices experienced in the Czech Republic or Slovakia, had experienced life in Glasgow as a place where the Roma/non-Roma divide was not (or at least far less) socially relevant. This was, for example, apparent in my conversations with Mr Búrik who sometimes spoke about how things were "different" in Glasgow: "It is another approach (prístup)80 _{to people here, and to us as Roma - the approach}

is quite different. They take us normally." He contrasted this "different approach" with an

79 _{Such an explanation is provided, for example, by Grill (2012) in his study on (Slovak) Roma migrants living in}

Glasgow. Grill refers to the "socio-cultural baggage" (p. 49) that 'white' Slovak and Czech migrants, who work as interpreters/support workers, bring with them. In his argument, this 'baggage' plays a key role in categorisation and identification processes of Roma in a particular inner city area of Glasgow.

80 _{What is also interesting here is that prístup also translates in English as 'access' or 'admission'. The use of such}

a term by Mr Búrik thus relates to social (im)mobility; when he talks of different prístup towards Roma in Glasgow and that Roma are taken "normally", this, to my understanding, also means being allowed access, participation in society.

example of an incident in his town back in Slovakia when his wife was refused a phone contract by the telecommunications company T-Mobile for being Roma: "They told her face to face that they do not give phones to Roma!" Other research informants mentioned that they felt positive about being "less visible" in Glasgow due to the presence of a diverse population in the city, and how they would often be seen as Asians due to their looks, or that people would not be able to easily 'place' them or their origin (see also Grill 2012, p. 48). Others talked about having no questions asked or getting no 'suspicious looks' from strangers in Glasgow when introducing oneself as Slovak or Czech or as coming from Eastern Europe. What this hints at is the fact that the EU accession of Slovakia and the Czech Republic not only opened up the possibility for these informants to leave their home cities and villages and come to the UK, but to come to and live in Glasgow as EU citizens, as Slovaks or Czechs on a par with other (non-Roma) Slovaks and Czechs. This is not to say that they now identified primarily as Slovak, Czech, or EU citizens (which would be a rather individual question) but to emphasise that these different identifications were now available to them alongside that as Roma, man or woman, villager, city person, Slovak-speaking, Romany-speaking, etc. Importantly, certain entitlements and rights that they were granted as EU citizens just like any other Slovak or Czech migrant, too, represent one aspect of what Mr Búrik called the "different approach", of being treated "normally" in Glasgow.

With this in mind, it is important to note that in the advice session that I have described above both the support worker and Mr Búrik had been communicating in their native language Slovak. In my reading of that situation, they had been communicating in Slovak as fellow Slovaks, or more specifically, as fellow Slovak migrants in Glasgow. I argue, that the moment the support worker asked Mr Búrik to 'confirm' his Roma ethnicity, a boundary was drawn between them, that of Roma and non-Roma. From this perspective, the emerging awkwardness then seems an effect of, firstly, the fact that the question presupposed Roma to be a strict either/or category which Mr Búrik's reply of "half" called into question. Secondly, the classificatory practice of ticking the 'Roma box' immediately created a social distance between Mr Búrik and the support worker which did not exist in previous meetings and, from the perspective of Mr Búrik, might have felt like a setback.

4.3.2 The ethnicisation of need

The above analysis focused on a specific interaction between support worker and client. I have argued that this specific conversation between Mr Búrik and the support worker was not happening in a void but is embedded in the routine practices and ideas of a variety of actors involved in the field such as the third sector organisations, their staff members, volunteers, other service users, local authorities (see section 4.1.1). As mentioned earlier, the form in question was not an ethnic monitoring form but an internal form to be filled out by the support worker to ascertain and record a client's eligibility to continue to access several services. Boundary making was thus not restricted here to a distancing between the non-Roma support worker and the half-but-still-Roma client. Following Wimmer's argument, the shift in services and resources from the more general category of EU nationals or Slovak and Czech migrants to the more restrictively defined 'Roma population' or 'Roma clients' posits the divide Roma/non-Roma as the socially relevant boundary, i.e. that 'the Roma' are a specifically vulnerable group with greater needs that have to be met through various services and support. This, in turn, firstly, requires and at the same time reinforces the thought that 'the Roma' exist as a homogeneous group, making invisible the heterogeneity I came across during my fieldwork, e.g., Slovak-speaking, Romany-speaking, darker and lighter skinned people, singles, families, city-dwellers,81 villagers, persons with varying educational backgrounds and skill sets, which might be as equally or more significant in people's lives and their trajectories. Secondly, the drawing of such a boundary and the wider shift of attention described above (section 4.1.1) meant the sudden loss of support provided for Czech- and Slovak-speaking migrants who did not qualify as Roma. For those, on the other hand, who were able to "tick the Roma box", some new and often more specialised services opened up.

Thirdly, not only were Roma considered and constructed as a homogeneous group, but ascribing neediness and vulnerability to a certain ethnicity holds the risk of continuing their

81 _{Mestizo was, for example, a term used by some research informants to refer to those Roma with an urban}

stigmatisation82 as poor and needy, thus constructing a vulnerable population 'laden with problems', or in other words, a 'risk population'. This is not to deny that many who would either identify themselves with or be categorised by others as Roma face significant, often structural barriers; but turning an issue into a 'Roma issue' might neglect other potentially relevant factors that give rise to an increased vulnerability, such as the specific migration process (see chapter 3) interacting with educational background, language skills, age, gender, etc. Moreover, the powerful notion of 'the vulnerable Roma' also runs the risk of reducing or denying Roma their agency, and thus contributes to a patronising image of powerless and hopeless victims, unable to deal with and overcome difficulties on their own. This could be seen, for example, in pessimistic remarks that I came across during the fieldwork such as the following made by a senior member of a third-sector organisation working with Roma: "These people, the Roma, will never get out of poverty". Such comments were usually made in the context of accounting, from the organisation's point of view, for the difficulties in bringing about a measurable change to people's life.

In some ways, such stigma of 'the needy' appears as a tragic irony. The term 'Roma' as an encompassing category representing different groups is a relatively recent one. It was adopted by the delegates of the first World Romani Congress held in London in 1972 to reject the existing pejorative terms at the time such as Tsiganes, Zigeuner, Gitanos, Gypsies and so on (Blasco 2002, p. 175). Nearly four decades later, however, the very term which was agreed upon in order to tackle stigma seems to be unable to disrupt the stigmatisation. The depiction of Roma as needy is particularly problematic in the current political and economic context in the UK and throughout Europe. The currently ongoing retrenchment of the welfare state and the relentless march of the neoliberal economic and political project (Wacquant 2009) have created conditions in which hardly a day goes by in the media and public discourse without 'the unemployed', 'the immigrant' , 'the other' being seen as 'burdensome' for the welfare state (see also chapter 6). What is specific with regard to Roma is that in addition to labels such as 'welfare claimant', 'burdensome', 'benefit scrounger', or 'welfare tourist', the creation of Roma as needy has also led to the resurfacing of older prejudices against 'Gypsies', for example, as being 'workshy', 'parasites', 'lazy' and unwilling to work or to integrate. Thus, being depicted

82 _{Following Goffman's (1963) definition of stigma as an "attribute that is deeply discrediting" and reduces the}

bearer "from a whole and usual person to a tainted, discounted one" (p. 3), I understand stigmatisation as processes that create such a "discrediting attribute".

as specifically vulnerable and needy will add further fuel to the current situation with a significant rise of anti-Gypsy sentiments and racist attacks on Roma who are increasingly being targeted and seen as a 'menace' to European societies (Stewart 2012).