Last updated 10th July 2024: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
This article follows earlier discussions about the current status of Romani refugees and migrants within Europe and the role of human rights in the process of accession of Central European states to the European Union (EU), in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Volume 13, Number 2. Romani migration opens up central issues of democratisation in Eastern Europe and of the role played by the EU in shaping that process. Human rights appear to have been accorded secondary importance and were replaced by the political doctrines of accession as efforts to manage and control migration, particularly of so-called undesirable migrants, such as the Roma, have reached a hiatus. The argument offered here is that discrimination of the Roma has been defined as no more than a social problem so that governments, both East and West, can proceed with the political agenda of enlargement. To demonstrate this point, the article reviews some Czech governmental documentation related to the treatment of Roma and places it within the context of the debate around accession within the broader framework of EU harmonisation of immigration policies.
1. Sarah Collinson, Beyond Borders: West European Migration Policy Towards the 21st Century, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1993. Collinson explores, among other issues, the EU's changing security agenda in the post-Cold War era, when a new emotive language of “mass migration” and “threat” is being used.Google Scholar
2. “Germany sends back Czech Roma”, RFE/RL Newsline, Vol. 6, No. 140, Part II, 29 July 2002.Google Scholar
3. They varied from over 250 applications per month in the summer of 1999 to approximately 40 or less per month in 2001, with countries such as the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, and lately Ireland as well as New Zealand being the countries of destination (this information was gathered as part of the IOM project in Prague, January 2000–January 2001).Google Scholar
4. The point that prejudice enabled tougher measures to be more widely imposed against the Roma is supported, for example, in the following article: Richard Bartram, David Enright, Emma Jane Davies and Chris Rush, “An Uphill Struggle: the Roma of the Czech State and Slovakia”, Refugee Legal Centre Annual Report, 1997–1998, London: Refugee Legal Centre, 1998, pp. 10–15.Google Scholar
5. Rudko Kawczynski, Report on the Condition of the Roma in Europe (With special attention to the historical and contemporary situation of refugees and asylum seekers and the causes of migration). Warsaw: Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), 2000, p. 4. The Report was commissioned by the OSCE for the International Consultation on Romani Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Warsaw in October 2000.Google Scholar
6. Ambalavaner Sivanandan, “From Immigration Control to ‘Induced Repatriation’”, Race and Class, pamphlet, No. 5, 1978.Google Scholar
7. See, for example, Gil Loescher, Beyond Charity, International Cooperation and the Global Refugee Crisis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. The other two solutions are local integration and resettlement.Google Scholar
8. Ivan Gabal, Analysis of the Migration Climate and Migration Tendencies to Western European Countries in Romany Communities in Selected Cities in the Czech Republic, 2000. A survey commissioned by IOM Prague, unpublished.Google Scholar
9. This information was gained through informal discussions with representatives of the Gremium, a Czech Romani umbrella organisation based in Rokycany, whose Institute for Romani Studies undertook its own survey into the Czech Foreign Ministry activities, October 2000.Google Scholar
10. Many different sources and authors have paid attention to these issues, including the social policy angle to citizenship as well as providing a specific focus on third-country nationals. Among the most recent are: Mit'a Castle-Kanĕrová, “Roma Refugees: The EU Dimension”, in Will Guy, ed., Between Past and Future, The Roma of Central and Eastern Europe, Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2001; Grete Brochmann, “Controlling Immigration in Europe”, in Grete Brochmann and Thomas Hammar, eds., Mechanisms of Immigration Control, Oxford and New York: Berg, 1999; Alice Bloch & Carl Levy, eds., Refugees, Citizenship and Social Policy in Europe, Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1999; Anna Karina Kolb, “European Social Rights: Towards National Welfare States”, in Jet Bussemaker, ed., Citizenship and Welfare State Reform in Europe, London: Routledge, 1999; Theodora Kostakopoulou, “European Citizenship and Immigration after Amsterdam: Openings, Silences, Paradoxes”, in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Special Issue, Vol. 24, No. 4, October 1998; Virginie Guiraudon, “Third Country Nationals and European Law: Obstacles to Rights Expansion”, in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Special Issue, Vol. 24, No. 4, October 1998. David Cesarani and Mary Fulbrook, eds., Citizenship, Nationality and Migration in Europe, London: Routledge, 1996; Jens Magleby Sorensen, The Exclusive European Citizenship, Aldershot: Avebury, 1996.Google Scholar
11. European Commission, Communication on a Common EU Immigration and Asylum Policy (Vitorino & Diamantopoulou), Brussels: EC, 2000.Google Scholar
12. Gary Younge, “Penalising the Poor”, The Guardian, 19 March 2001.Google Scholar
13. IOM Geneva, The Return of Irregular Migrants: The Challenge for Central and Eastern Europe, 30 September 1999, unpublished. A report prepared for the Odysseus Programme of the European Commission.Google Scholar
14. OSCE, Report on the Situation of Roma and Sinti in the OSCE Area, The Hague, March 2000. Very specific reports on violations of Romani rights, specifically in the Czech Republic, that were neglected by various international agreements, which this article has drawn on, appeared in Roma Rights, Newsletter of the European Roma Rights Center, nos. 2 and 4, 2000. A list of the agreements and partnerships signed between the EU and prospective accession countries is contained in the European Commission, Enlargement Briefing: EU Support for Roma Communities in Central and Eastern Europe, Brussels: Enlargement Information Unit, December 1999.Google Scholar
15. Prc̆ehled usnesení vlády C̆R k zález̆itostem Romů, jednáních Rady pro národnosti vlády C̆R s ohledem na romskou komunitu a opatrc̆ení jednotlivých rezortůve vztahu k Romům (od roku 1992) [Overview of decrees of the government of the Czech Republic related to matters of the Roma, proceedings of the Czech governmental Council for Nationalities with regards to the Romani community and measures of individual ministries in relation to Roma (since 1992)], Prague: Government of the Czech Republic, 2000.Google Scholar
16. Pr̆ehled usnesení. Google Scholar
17. Pr̆ehled usnesení, p. 1.Google Scholar
18. Pr̆ehled usnesení, p. 2.Google Scholar
19. Pr̆ehled usnesení, pp. 2–5.Google Scholar
20. Pr̆ehled usnesení, p. 5. For more information about the immigration of Czech Roma to Canada see Ronald Lee, “Post-Communism Romani Migration to Canada”, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Vol. 13, No. 2, Spring–Summer 2000, pp. 51–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21. Zpráva o situaci romské komunity v C̆eské republice [Report about the situation of the Romani community in the Czech Republic], Prague, 1997, http://www.vlada.cz/1250/vrk/vrk.htm.Google Scholar
22. Pr̆ehled usnesení, pp. 9–15.Google Scholar
23. Pr̆ehled usnesení, p. 16.Google Scholar
24. Informace o plnĕní usnesení vlády týkajících se integrace romských komunit a aktivního postupu státní správy pr̆i uskutečňování pr̆ijatých tĕmito usneseními ke dni 31.prosince 2000 [Information about fulfillment of governmental decrees related to the integration of Romani communities and the active approach of the state administration during realisation of measures adopted under these decrees until 31 December 2000], Prague, 2000, http://www.vlada.cz/1250/vrk/vrk.htm.Google Scholar
25. Report on Progress Towards Accession—the Czech Republic, European Commission, 8 November 2000, http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/czech/index.htm.Google Scholar
26. Koncepce Ministerstva zahranĭních vĕcí ve vztahu k romské problematice [Concept of Ministry of Foreign Affairs in relation to the Romani problematic], Prague, Document No. 140892/2000-LP, 2000, pp. 3, 8. This is an internal Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs document that the author had access to as part of the IOM project. The Ministry elaborates its approach to Romani issues stating that the centrality of the Romani question does not lie in human rights but is a social question, and adding that the Czech Republic is a full signatory of international conventions on human rights.Google Scholar
27. Dimitrina Petrova, “The Denial of Racism”, Roma Rights, No. 4, 2000, pp. 26–35.Google Scholar
28. Information about training projects between the Czech Inter-Ministerial Commission and the UK's Commission for Racial Equality on anti-discrimination practices within the police, for example, and Phare projects on training of state administrators in conjunction with Charles University, Prague, was gained as part of the IOM project, January 2000–January 2001.Google Scholar
29. Kawczynski, OSCE Report, p. 4.Google Scholar
30. This information was passed to IOM Prague project staff from Romani asylum seekers returning particularly from the Netherlands, where this message was given to them in reception centres.Google Scholar
31. Angus Fraser, “The present and future of the Gypsy past”, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Spring/Summer 2000, Vol. 13, No. 2. See also David Crowe's article in the present issue.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
32. Vernon M. Briggs Jr., Mass Immigration and the National Interest, Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1992, p. 148, also cited in Mit'a Castle-Kanĕrová, Roma Refugees: The EU Dimension, p. 4.Google Scholar
33. European Commission, Communication on a Common EU Immigration and Asylum Policy. Google Scholar
34. Han Entzinger, “Different and Equal, Models for the Analysis of Integration Policies”, Council of Europe, Special Group in Integration and Community Relations, Utrecht: Utrecht University, 1995, p. 5.Google Scholar
35. Charles Boswell, “EU Enlargement: What are the Prospects for East–West Migration?”, London: RIIA European Programme, 2000.Google Scholar
36. Claire Wallace, Migration Potential in Central and Eastern Europe, IOM, Geneva, 1998. A survey conducted in 11 countrries by the Paul Lazarsfeld, Gesellschaft fur Sozialforschung, Vienna.Google Scholar
37. Wallace, Migration Potential, p. 78.Google Scholar
38. Wallace, Migration Potential, p. 18.Google Scholar
