Roma: Living Conditions, Social Perception and State Policy in the Macro-Region of ‘Eastern Europe’ before and after 1989
Roma: Living Conditions, Social Perception and State Policy in the Macro-Region of ‘Eastern Europe’ before and after 1989

Summary/Abstract: The article compares the situation of Roma populations in former ‘Eastern Europe’ during the period of Communist rule with their subsequent experience, concentrating on differences in living conditions, popular perceptions and state policy towards them. In spite of broadly assimilationist policies of Communist regimes and certain human rights abuses, Roma people benefited overall from the need of command economies for the unskilled labour they supplied and the relatively high wages paid for such work, as well as from improved access to housing, education and health services. The post-1989 shift to market economies led to mass unemployment among Roma and their rapid impoverishment, although a small minority prospered as entrepreneurs. The majority’s growing dependence on social benefits sharpened popular resentment and discrimination, providing an unfruitful environment for any initiatives to improve their situation, even when these were made a condition for EU membership and supported by EU funding. After the EU-accession of former Communist countries the plight of their Roma peoples appears no better but now they have become EU citizens, posing intractable problems which are both political and human.

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