Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 1
·
May 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
Gypsy Palaces: A New Visibility for the Roma in Romania?
François Ruegg
(University of Fribourg, Switzerland)
Over the last 25 years, a new type of dwelling has spread in some Romanian cities and peri-urban belts; the so-
called Roma or Gypsy Palaces. Roma/Gypsies have been considered for centuries as a foreign, vagrant and poor
outcast ethnic group that should be educated and eventually assimilated. After 1989 they became a
discriminated minority’ deserving of pity and help. The numerous imposing and flashy buildings owned by
ʽ
nouveaux-riches Gypsies, although often unfinished and empty, challenge the main stereotypes afflicting Roma
people, those of poverty and vagrancy. These palaces are still considered as typical productions of an exotic
Roma ethnic culture’. Such a culture is in fact being constructed by activists and various political institutions in
ʽ
the name of a political Roma ethnic minority. Rejecting such an outdated culturalist/ethnicist and essentialist
approach, I see the palaces’ as the mere and common expression of recently acquired wealth and of the desire to
ʽ
belong to the new rich cosmopolitan élite. Hence in my view, Roma palaces are foremost a symbolic way of
affirming one’s new social status. They are not particularly Roma.
Keywords:
social representations, new urban dwellings, Roma, stereotypes, ethnicization
When Romania joined the EU in 2007, 19 non-Romanian minorities – that is, 10% of the
population, regrouped in a
Council of National Minorities
– enjoyed a very liberal status,
allowing them to create their own political parties, to appoint deputies and to develop cultural
activities with the financial support of the Government. A special unit had already been
established in 1997 at a governmental level to facilitate the development of these minorities:
the
Department for Interethnic Relations
. Education played an important role, mainly for the
conservation and the development of the vernacular languages. The differences among the so-
called ethnic minorities and the titular Nation (the ethnic Romanians) were, as a side effect,
reinforced due to the application of this kind of political model of multiculturalism.
Competition among the minorities themselves was also stimulated. As positive as this
discrimination can be, it remains discrimination. At the level of stereotypes and common
attitudes, such a policy has not brought about a greater sense of equality. Many surveys
conducted after the fall of the Ceausescu regime on intercultural relations in Romania,
including a research project I directed during a period of three years with colleagues in that
country (Poledna, Ruegg and Rus eds 2006), have confirmed the permanence of ethnic
stereotypes. Hungarians for example are still considered as hard workers; Roma are instead
seen as lazy and dependent of Government subsidies, not fit for sophisticated jobs, to name
but a few.
In addition, the vast movement of temporary economic emigration of Romanian
citizen from Romania to the Latin Western European countries has provoked another chasm.
Following some widely echoed acquisitive crimes perpetrated by Romanian Roma in Italy,
ethnic Romanians challenged the new name given to Gypsies: Roma. Indeed, in Western
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