Evictions and Voluntary Returns in Barcelona and Bucharest
Evictions and Voluntary Returns in Barcelona and Bucharest

Practices of Metropolitan Governance

Summary/Abstract: This article is about techniques of exclusion by local governmentsagainst Romani people. Tackling the case of people of Romaniethnicity in Barcelona and Bucharest, I explore evictions andvoluntary return as practices of segregation within and exclusion fromthe city. I reflect on the condition of being or becoming Roma in theprocess of spatial cleansing by interrogating the construction of Romaas an ethnicized mobile minority, a category that is submitted to socialand territorial exclusion. Under the pretext of defending the socialsecurity and the urban development of cities, the local authoritiesproduce moral panic around the presence of Roma. Portraying themfirst as vulnerable, then as having a mobile life-style, the authoritiesjustify a range of interventions that eventually push out the Romahabitants and subsequently deny them the right to the city.

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