Roma-related activism and nongovernmentalism, in which these phenomena are interrogated in their historical and interdisciplinary settings and assessed not so much in moral terms but, rather, vis-à-vis their critical potentiality to make a difference to the situation of the Roma and to the ways in which we see and study them.
Roma Activism and the Post-1989
Governmentalization of Civil Society
In the aftermath of 1989 and until well into the 1990s, Western (European) governments, donors, and IGOs primarily perceived new and already established Roma-related CSOs as entry points into postauthoritarian societies in Central and Eastern Europe and as actors who could (possibly) effectively challenge authoritarian legacies and the ways in which these were considered to impact issues such as the discrimination, poverty, and marginalization of the Roma. Initially, relatively well-established, Western-based NGOs with a background in advocacy work that had begun in the 1960s and 70s—most notably, Minority Rights Group International, Amnesty International, and Helsinki Watch (later Human Rights Watch)—as well as new associations such as the Project on Ethnic Relations and the Open Society Institute (OSI), played an important role in bringing to the fore the violations of the rights of Central and Eastern European Roma. In their reports of the early and mid-1990s, which were considerably based on information received from domestic Romani activists and scholars, as well as from local or national advocacy and dissident groups that were already established during the socialist era, these CSOs presented the situation of the Roma as a “human emergency” (van Baar 2011b; 2018). Indirectly, these informal and more formally organized local groups of activists, intellectuals, and other advocates played a crucial role in how, through the vital and indispensable link of several of these international NGOs, the Roma gradually emerged onto the agenda of IGOs, the EU in particular (Ram 2010; van Baar 2011a). At about the same time, established and new Western-based CSOs with a background in community building, local development, microfinancing and poor relief—among them several FBOs—started to fund (usually) small-scale initiatives dedicated to improving the living circumstances of Central and Eastern European Roma.
Both in the case of advocacy work and in that of several development projects, IGOs and larger donors such as Cordaid, OSI, and Western (European) ministries of foreign affairs and development assistance started to perceive of (the founding and funding of) these local civil societal initiatives as tools to put pressure on postauthoritarian governments and their approaches to Romani minorities. Somewhat similar to how CSOs were seen in the 1980s in the broader framework of development in the Global South, in the European Roma-related context, these “nongovernmental” channels were often represented as “having a set of comparative advantages in relation to public sector agencies such as cost effectiveness, less bureaucratic operating styles, closeness to communities and reduced prevalence to corruption” (Lewis 2005: 211). Thus, one of the characteristics of the rise of nongovernmentalism was, David Lewis (2005: 211) suggests, the somewhat naïve and conservative idea that CSOs were “essentially private, non-state protectors of the public interest.” At the same time, in the case of the Romani movement, a distinction between this first phase and a second one, in which civil society has increasingly been governmentalized, is difficult to make. This difficulty relates to the global conditions under which the post-1989 support for Roma-related CSOs had started.
The post-1989 Romani movement has been confronted by a dilemma that has largely emanated from a “perverse confluence” (Dagnino 2008) of two different processes, related to two different political projects: a participatory democratic project and a neoliberal one. The Romani movement has profoundly been influenced by postsocialist processes of democratization, which have coincided with the development of new public spaces; new forms, subjects, sites, and scales of citizenship; decentered forms of governance and the increased participation of civil societal actors in decision-making linked to public and policy issues. Dissident movements with roots in opposition against communist regimes, human rights and social movements that appeared in the West since the 1960s, and the momentum of 1989 have contributed to the emergence of this participatory process aimed at developing and deepening democracy, including the building of a stronger, viable civil society.1
At the same time, the Romani movement has been influenced by the neoliberal project (see also below, where I discuss the governmentalization of civil society more explicitly). Postsocialist state and civil society building and the transition from plan to market economies in Eastern and Central Europe have coincided with sweeping and intense processes of neoliberalization (van Baar 2011a). The participatory democratic and the neoliberal projects have ambiguously flown together:
The perversity lies in the fact that, even if these projects point in opposite and even antagonistic directions, each of them not only requires an active and proactive civil society, but also uses a number of common concepts and points of reference. In particular, notions such as citizenship, participation and civil society are central elements in both projects, even if they are being used with very different meanings. (Dagnino 2008: 55)
The uncomfortable merging of these two political projects complicates a reading of the Romani movement along straightforward lines of empowerment, emancipation, and human and minority rights articulation. The participatory project and its focus on collective responsibilities, disputing exclusionary mechanisms, and rendering delicate societal problems public tend to be displaced. Indeed, the neoliberal project limits societal participation to individualistic market inclusion—for instance, through activation policies (van Baar 2012a). Accordingly, a democratic agenda tends to be translated into a technocratic, social inclusion one, in which minorities such as the Roma are naturalized as “problem groups” that are individually, or at the community level, held responsible for solving the problems they face. The socioeconomic, political, and historical trajectories that have contributed to the marginalization of many Roma tend to be depoliticized through privatizing, territorializing, and culturalizing these problems. Due to the narrow focus on the ethnicized individual or community, on particular (usually segregated) localities, and on cultural and behavioral patterns of work, consumption, or mobility, complex contexts of marginalization have often been overlooked and depoliticized. As a consequence of these neglects and reductions, it has often been suggested that it is a “Roma (inclusion) problem” that needs to be solved (van Baar 2011a: 243–44).
Accordingly, there is an important difference between, on the one hand, the Romani movement and other social movements in Central and Eastern Europe and, on the other hand, social movements in parts of the world where participatory democracy had been established longer ago. The way in which civil societies have been revived and woven in postsocialist Central and Eastern Europe has roughly taken place at the same time of the global “NGO boom” and the changing of roles that CSOs were going to play in policy-making. These changes took place in the context of influential transformations of the structures of capitalism, including new approaches to poverty, security, and development (van Baar 2011a; 2018). Moreover, neoliberal concepts and practices have transnational “roots,” including some in pre-1989 Central and Eastern Europe (Bockman 2011). In some countries, most notably in Hungary, the impact of neoliberalization has already become tangible since the 1970s (Haney 2002). For these reasons, the simultaneity of the post-1989 rise of nongovernmentalism with the neoliberalization of states, markets, and societies in Central and Eastern Europe makes it more difficult to distinguish or phase the participatory democratic and neoliberal projects, particularly regarding the Roma’s situation.
Until late into the 1990s, and partly as a consequence of Cold War East-West relations and the related Western distrust of state authorities in Central and Eastern Europe, the direct Western support for Romani minorities in Central and Eastern Europe mainly consisted of establishing and supporting small-scale CSOs. The steadily growing number of Roma-related CSOs, mainly funded by Western donors, became a major channel for the initial development of, and support for, the (more formal) Romani movement. At the same time, the restructuring of Central and Eastern European states and their institutional infrastructures led to a major change of state–civil society relations. The “strengthening of civil society” and the post-1989
