Roma
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- World History Encyclopedia - Romani
- Encyclopedia Iranica - Gypsies of Persia
- The National WWII Museum - Fascination and Hatred: The Roma in European Culture
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - Holocaust Encyclopedia - Roma (Gypsies) in Prewar Europe
- Digital Commons at American University Washington College of Law - Minority Rights: The Failure of International Law to Protect the Roma (PDF)
- Brigham Young University - Lack of Educational Opportunities for the Roma People in Eastern Europe
Who are the Roma?
Where do the Roma live?
What does the word Roma mean?
Why are the Roma discriminated against?
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Roma, an ethnic group of traditionally itinerant people who originated in northern India but in modern times live worldwide, principally in Europe. Most Roma speak some form of Romany, a language closely related to the modern Indo-European languages of northern India, as well as the major language of the country in which they live. It is generally agreed that Roma groups left India in repeated migrations and that they were in Persia by the 11th century, in southeastern Europe by the beginning of the 14th, and in western Europe by the 15th century. By the second half of the 20th century they had spread to every inhabited continent.
The total world Roma population is estimated to be about 15 million. Most Roma were still in Europe in the early 21st century, especially in the Slavic-speaking lands of central Europe and the Balkans. Large numbers live in Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary.
Names and subgroups
Many Roma refer to themselves by one generic name, Rom (meaning “man” or “husband”), although some object to being called Roma and prefer their own, more-specific ethnonyms. The word Romani, an adjective that is used by all Romani peoples to describe themselves, is often nominalized and used in place of Roma. It may be spelled Romany, but this spelling is often used to specifically refer to the Romanichals, a Romani subgroup from England. Outsiders (often termed Gadje by the Roma) have given Romani peoples a variety of names, many of which are considered pejorative. In Europe many names for the Roma derive from either an incorrectly supposed Egyptian origin for the group (seen in the outdated English term Gypsy) or the Byzantine Greek term Atsingonoi, which designated a heretical Christian group (seen in the German term Zigeuner, which is also considered offensive).
The Roma recognize divisions among themselves with some sense of territoriality emphasized by certain cultural and dialectal differences. Some authorities delineate three main confederations: (1) the Kalderash (smiths who came from the Balkans and then from central Europe and are the most numerous), (2) the Gitanos (French Gitans, mostly in the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa, and southern France, historically associated with the arts of entertainment), and (3) the Manush (French Manouches, also known as Sinti, mostly in Alsace and other regions of France and Germany, often stereotyped as traveling showmen and circus people). Each of these main divisions was further divided into two or more subgroups distinguished by occupational specialization or territorial origin or both.
Traditional lifeways
Economy and movement
Traditionally the Roma have pursued occupations that allowed them to maintain an itinerant life on the perimeters of settled society. The men were livestock traders, animal trainers and exhibitors, tinkers (metalsmiths and utensil repairmen), and musicians; the women told fortunes, sold potions, begged, and worked as entertainers. Before the advent of veterinary medicine, many farmers looked to Roma livestock dealers for advice on herd health and husbandry.
The degree to which the Roma have remained truly migratory is a point of controversy. It is clear, however, that Romani nomadism has been largely insular in character. All nomadic Roma migrate at least seasonally along patterned routes that ignore national boundaries. They also follow along a chain, as it were, of kin or tribal links. In the modern day, travel is by caravans of cars, trucks, and trailers, and livestock trading has given way to the sale of used cars and trailers. Most traditional Romani trades are no longer in demand in an industrialized economy. Roma in much of Europe have lower employment rates than their non-Romani peers, and those who are employed frequently report being self-employed or employed in ad hoc work. Some find work as day laborers or take informal seasonal jobs, and many attempt to find work in countries other than their place of origin.
Kinship
The archetypal Romani family consists of a married couple, their unmarried children, and at least one married son, his wife, and their children. Upon marriage, a young couple typically lives with the husband’s parents while the young wife learns the ways of her husband’s group. Ideally, by the time an older son is ready to move away with his family, a younger son will have married and joined the household with his new wife. Although the practice had declined significantly by the late 20th century, marriages traditionally were arranged by the elders in the family or band to strengthen political and kinship ties to other families, bands, or, occasionally, confederations. A central feature of Romani marriages was the payment of a bride-price to the parents of the bride by the parents of the groom.
Bands are made up of vitsas, which are name groups of extended families with common descent (either patrilineal or matrilineal) that can number as many as 200 strong. A large vitsa may have its own chief and council. Vitsa membership can be claimed if offspring result through marriage into the vitsa. Loyalty and economic cooperation are expected at the household rather than the vitsa level.
Political structure
There has never been on record any one authority, either congress or “king,” accepted by all Romani groups, although a number of individuals have claimed the title at various times and several “international” congresses of Roma have been held. Nevertheless, the existence of political authorities among the Roma is an established fact. Those who affected noble titles such as “duke” or “count” in their early historical dealings with local nationals were probably chieftains of bands, who moved in groups of anything from 10 to a few hundred households. These chieftains (voivodes) are elected for life from among outstanding families of the group, and the office is not heritable. Their power and authority vary according to the size of the band, its traditions, and its relationships with other bands within a confederation.
It was the voivode who acted as treasurer for the whole band, decided the pattern of its migration, and became its spokesman to local municipal authorities. He governed through a council of elders that also consulted with the phuri dai, a senior woman in the band. The phuri dai’s influence was strong, particularly in regard to the fate of the women and children, and seemed to rest much on the evident earning power and organization of the women as a group within the band.
Strongest among Roma institutions of social control was the kris, connoting both the body of customary law and values of justice as well as the ritual and formation of the tribunal of the band. Basic to the Roma code were the all-embracing concepts of fidelity, cohesiveness, and reciprocity within the recognized political unit. The ultimate negative sanction of the kris tribunal, which dealt with all disputes and breaches of the code, was excommunication from the band. A sentence of ostracism, however, might exclude the individual from participation in certain band activities and punish him with menial tasks. In some cases rehabilitation was granted by the elders and followed by a feast of reconciliation.
Arts
The Roma have been one of the vehicles through which folk beliefs and practices have been disseminated and, in areas where they are settled (e.g., Romania), have been positive guardians of “national” customs, dances, and the like, which had largely disappeared from rural life by the turn of the 21st century. Their musical heritage is vast and encompasses such traditions as flamenco. Although Roma have a rich oral tradition, their written literature is relatively sparse.
Discrimination
Like many unsettled confederations who live among settled peoples, the Roma have found themselves scapegoated by their neighbors. They have regularly been accused by the local populace of many evils as a prelude to later official and legal persecution. Their relations with the authorities in the host country have been marked by consistent contradiction. Official decrees were often aimed at settling or assimilating them, yet local authorities systematically refused them the bare hospitality of a campsite.
Other policies sought to remove the Roma from various localities. Only 80 years after their first appearance in western Europe in the 15th century, they fell under the penalty of banishment and outlawry in almost all the countries of western Europe. Roma could be tortured and branded if discovered once in mid-16th-century England and sentenced to death if found in the country a second time. Inhabitants of some parts of western Europe organized hunts targeting Romani individuals. In several places Roma were enslaved and forced to work in-country (in the case of those from eastern Europe) or trafficked to Africa or the Americas (in the case of those from western Europe).
With the rise of scientific racism and social Darwinism in the 19th century came the idea that the Roma were racially inferior to other European peoples. They were described by the early criminologist Cesare Lombroso as being hereditary criminals. Various German states sought to assert more control over Romani individuals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In Bavaria, for example, in 1899 the police created a central office for collecting information on the Romani inhabitants of Munich, whether or not the individuals had a criminal past. In 1911 the Bavarian police began collecting the fingerprints of all Roma in the state. Similar measures were adopted in other areas in Germany, and in 1928 the Weimar government placed all Roma under permanent police surveillance.
Under the Third Reich Roma in and around Germany were subject to mass sterilization, confinement, and murder. Drawing on the 1920 work of lawyer Karl Binding and psychiatrist Alfred Hoche, the Nazi regime considered the Roma to have “lives unworthy of living,” as they were believed to be genetically predisposed to criminality (see also T4 Program). They were thus among the groups of people ordered sterilized in 1933. The Nürnberg Laws stripped Romani individuals of citizenship and forbade them from marrying ethnic Germans. By the end of 1938 the Nazis had begun rounding the Roma up and putting them into concentration camps, where they suffered the same genocidal policies as the Jews (see also Holocaust). Estimates of the number of Roma murdered by the Nazis vary from about 250,000 to 500,000.
Challenges persisted for Romani communities in the later 20th and 21st centuries. In the 20th century various Soviet countries attempted programs of enforced settlement to end Roma migration. Many Roma live in poor housing conditions with less access to health care and education than their non-Romani neighbors. Racism against them is common across different countries. For example, French laws in modern times forbade Romani groups access to campsites and subjected them to police supervision. In 2010 Nicolas Sarkozy’s government drew criticism for deporting hundreds of Roma to Romania and Bulgaria.
Romani civil rights movement
The modern Romani civil rights movement (also called the Roma, or Romani, movement) grew in the aftermath of World War II. Groups of Romani intellectuals formed, including the Romani Nomenklatura in the Soviet Union and the Études Tsiganes in France. In France in the late 1950s the Romani activist Ionel Rotaru, originally from Romania or Moldova, staged a theatrical coronation of himself as king of the Roma and began to draw a circle of intellectuals and aid fellow immigrants move from Romania to Paris. Rotaru, with the help of the brothers Vanko and Léulea Rouda, also began helping individuals seek reparations from the government of West Germany. Out of this effort came the Communauté Mondiale Gitane (CMG; “World Community of Gypsies”), the first truly international Romani organization.
In the ensuing decades a number of international organizations have been founded to help advance the cause of Romani civil rights. Several World Romani Congresses have been organized in a number of cities by the Comité International Rom and International Romani Union since the inaugural session in 1971. Other organizations, such as the European Roma and Travellers Forum (ERTF), seek to represent the Roma within certain geographic boundaries. The Romani women’s rights movement took off in the 1990s, and a number of Romani women occupy leadership positions in organizations such as the ERTF.