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Italy Moves to Census and Deport the Roma, In Our Continuing Re-enactment of the 1930s
enlightenedbum
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That's an Italian journalist.
Bonus: said interior minister has referred to it as the "Roma Question." No word if he's proposed a Final Solution to such yet.
This is of a piece with the slide towards authoritarian nationalism inside NATO. The Austrian chancellor just proposed an "axis" (yes) against migrants consisting of Austria, Italy, and Germany.
I don't really have much more to add about this other than what the fuck is happening
The idea that your vote is a moral statement about you or who you vote for is some backwards ass libertarian nonsense. Your vote is about society. Vote to protect the vulnerable.
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How. This has to be satire right? Please?
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Citizenship paperwork not in order.
Without Italian citizenship. Which is where this shit always starts.
Welcome to northern EU nations reaping what they've sown the past decade-plus via their collective handwringing and buck-passing over both the migration crises and the financial crises before that - wherein they hoped to just force "peripheral" (i.e. southern, poorer) Mediterranean countries to accept both austerity and the majority of folks coming from Africa and the Middle East - without substantively addressing the structural issues their actions (or lack thereof) may have contributed towards fueling anti-EU resentment and giving the far right electoral ammunition.
Matteo Salvini and his Northern League are absolutely disgusting, and it is horrifying that they're in government with the opportunistic, and incompetent (see the current mayor of Rome who is of their party), Five Star "Movement" (coincidentally an anti-EU party funded by Russian oligarchs!). Sadly the (centre) Left are marginalized now, after having been exhausted by both the North's reluctance to address the whole "having a currency union without a fiscal union" problem at the core of the EU, as well as Matteo Renzi's failed (narcissistic) gambit of staking his primiership over a controversial referendum a year-plus ago.
Salvini was also the guy behind a MSF rescue ship not being able to dock in Italy this past week with 600+ migrant peoples, and only getting respite from Spain's new (centre Left) PM offering to take them (Spain by the way has been getting an increase in people coming from North Africa despite having even fewer resources than Italy to accommodate people).
It's absolutely awful that a not insignificant number of Italians voted for these fascists, at the same time Italy used to be one of the most pro-EU-integration countries along with France, and with that in mind the fascists are partially correct when they say Italy shouldnt be taking in more immigrants while the non "peripheral" countries refuse to share in the burden (save for Merkel's one-off in 2015).
Not-so-fun-fact about Austria's revisiting fascism (with a healthy dose of Islamophobia): They also announced plans to shutter seven mosques, and deport 60 imams whose salaries have been paid for by the Turkish government (https://www.vox.com/2018/6/8/17442240/austria-closing-mosques-kicking-out-imams). They've also already introduced welfare cuts/restrictions for non-white immigrants as well.
Minor nit-pick Ebum: Austria is not a Nato member, but Hungary and Poland both are, and both are also deep in the throes of illiberal democracy going the way of authoritarianism!
You need that much on each side to be from Austria and think an Axis will work out for you.
Edit: with Germany and Italy no less. Its like they're all alien pod people and just had time to read a dictionary before going on TV.
Italy's actions will embolden other similar governments to do the same. It's going to be really shit.
I was very surprised when our tour guide from Britain had absolutely no qualms about warning us about the Roma. He even went so far as to say how it was different than American persecution of blacks because the Roma were so vile. I was really taken aback by it not so much that I expect other countries to not be racist but the brazenness of it.
Depends on a couple of things - firstly, are they citizens of a Schengen zone country? If they aren't it's possible that any visa they have only entitles them to stay in a single Schengen zone country.
Secondly, if they are a citizen of an EU country the 'freedom of movement' is actually the free movement of workers. Countries are within their rights to expel EU citizens if they are an 'unreasonable burden', out of work, dependent on social welfare etc. I imagine this would be the route that the Italians go down if they carry this action out.
You get that in Sweden too, last year there was a scandal when it turned out the police had been keeping a registry of Roma. The way people talk about them here you'd think they were roaming bands of outlaws Mad Max style, but I dont think I've ever even met a Roma in person.
I remember reading an article speaking out against "warnings" from tour guides earlier this year. They were also writing to denounce another article that claimed the Roma refuse to send their kids to school or get jobs and instead resort to thievery instead of contributing to society.
It's funny how people push minority groups to the fringe of society, then get mad that said minority groups live on the fringe of society. And by funny, I mean infuriating.
That they are from India explains the bias against them unfortunately.
And apparently the origin of the word Gypsy is because Europeans thought they were from Egypt.
This all from Quora and Wikipedia, so it might not be 100% accurate.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
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I think attributing this to the 2008 crisis and it's aftermath in the Eurozone is looking to closely at recent events and not at the larger trends. While the recent issues have exacerbated the issue, the bigger problem is long-running and remains the inability of a lot of these democratic countries to deal with less homogeneous societies. And by a lot I mean all since the issue seems universal.
No, this stems from 2002, not 2008. In the 15 years after the EU came into existence, the foreign born population in Italy increased from 1.5m to 5m, going from 2% of the population to 8%. And unequally distributed, so in the northern regions the population is 10-12% foreign born. That is a massive change in composition in such as short period of time-roughly equivalent to the US adding the entirety of Texas as migrants in the span of 15 years.. And the immigrants are mostly low skilled low education labor from eastern europe - not refugees from the Middle East or North Africa.
Just like with the debt issue, this massive backlash is what happens when you effectively remove major components of sovereignty from a country. Italy effective lost the ability to control immigration just like Greece lost the ability to control it fiscal policy, and in both cases the more pan-euro mainstreams parties only response to their people's desires for a change in course was to shrug and point to the EU rules. These democracies are failing because some of the basic tools of governance are locked away in some Brussels office building, where they can't be used.
I think it's funny you start this post with "No" and then basically walk through exactly the issue I was talking about. Cause that looks an awful lot like a backlash against demographic shifts.
He pulled out of Merkel's integration summit because a journalist wrote an unkind article about him and is currently ripping the government apart with his right wing immigration policies.
https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/world/2018-06-18-germany-to-refuse-migrants-from-july-if-no-european-deal-found-minister/
It's not the absolute numbers which may seem small from a western hemisphere nation's pov but the rate and perception of the change. Quadrupling in 15 years is an obvious change and thus very easy to point at as the source of concurrent problems even when it has little or nothing to do with them. Scapegoating immigrants wouldn't have worked in the 90s in the same way.
One of the worst parts about this is that this is probably motivated by the bavarian state elections later this year. Seehofer's right wing CSU is losing voters to the even more right wing (neo-fascist) AFD so the CSU is chasing the right fringe.
I mean it's racism against immigrants. That's what it is. "I don't mind some small amount of discreet brown people but there's too many coming over and I don't like it."
The Roma situation is a bit different from immigrants; they've always been there and they've always been hated. But they're not white and a significant percentage of the population of some places doesn't see them as people, certainly not people who should be here, so that's where that comes from.
I mean Roma were getting sterialised within my lifetime in some places. It's disgusting. Absolutely utterly disgusting, and not uncommon too. And there's no narrative against it. There aren't big blockbuster movies about the plight, or dynamic investigative reporting because everyone knows and nobody apparently really cares.
I've never really been able to figure out why this is. People will stand up for jews, muslims, the disabled, all the other favorite targets of right wingers, all except the Roma for some reason. Even if they're not directly prejudiced against them, it's like it doesnt register with them that the Roma even get victimized at all.
They are basically Europe's indigenous population, at least in that social slot.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Probably doesnt help that historically they've been a vagabond society well into modern history, while most other groups settle permanently.
They don't really occupy the place of indigenous groups because part of the sentiment against them is "they're foreign, they don't belong, they never will."
I can't speak to that sentiment personally, but I've always felt there was always a hairsbreadth from "they should go back to where they came from" from a certain kind of person regarding indigenous peoples, no matter where we are talking about.
In the UK there's two main groups, the Romani 'gypsies' and the Irish travellers (alongside new-age travellers and so on). The Roma basically keep to themselves as far as I'm aware and live in a parallel culture. They have all the sorts of issues with living in relative poverty and discrimination that you can expect. That they live separately results in them becoming the 'other' for many communities.
Irish travellers, who may also be called gypsies (but aren't) are a completely different group of people. I don't really have any sympathy for Irish travellers and I don't really know anyone who does. They have a poor reputation due to high levels of drinking, violence and stealing in their community. They often remove their children from school and force the girls into underage marriages.
It's unfortunate as the Romani get tarred by the actions of the Irish travellers resulting in a lot of prejudice towards them.
Wouldn't that be more 1920's Italy?
Yuck. I never have an patience for “I’m not a racist but this group are rightfully persecuted.” No-one is ever willing to say “I don’t have any good reasons for disliking x group, I just do ” - they always have “good” reasons for why their particular disliked minority is the sole minority who truly deserves it.
There are problems with such things in non-traveller communities too, however. Typically poor urban communities, where people have few prospects, quality of life is low, and local services are underfunded. I recall at school, there were loads of kids from the local estate who just wouldn't come in because they didn't give a shit and neither did their parents. Drinking problems, homelessness, theft in deprived communities... its on the streets of all our towns and cities too, and in rural areas.
The problem is that there's groups of people who are deprived and neglected by society, distrustful of authority, and blamed for thieir own situation, and a lack of compassion and willingness to help them.
But even then, we don't have the same problem with discrimination against Roma and other travellers (but more specifically Roma) you see in South, Central and Eastern Europe. Italy, Austria and the Balkans are awful for it especially. That said, we can't pretend we don't absolutely need to challenge our own issues too.