Although there is some debate regarding the approximate date Roma people arrived on Romanian land (Achim, 1998; Grigore, Neacsu, & Furtuna, 2007; Sandu M. , 2005) historical
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documents hint that Roma people, originally from India, migrated to the region known today as Romania sometimes between 11th-14th centuries. Most sources indicate the fourteenth century as being the more accurate date, a period that coincided with the beginning of Roma slavery in the Carpato-Danubiano-Pontic space.
2.2.1. Roma Slavery
Roma people were mentioned for the first time in an official document in 1385 in Wallachia, as 40 families of Atigani were awarded to Tismana Monastery by the Prince of Wallachia, Dan I. In Transylvania, Roma people were mentioned for the first time in surviving documents from the 1400s, when it was attested that 17 Ciganus belonged to a rich boyar. In Moldavia, Roma people were mentioned in 1428, as another prince, Alexander the Good, donated 31 families of Tigani to another Monastery, called Bistrita Monastery (Achim, 1998).
The migration of Roma people from India or Persia to Europe was influenced by the military events of the time. Various groups of Roma, affected by the major upheaval of the Middle East and South-Eastern Europe, were fleeing inevitably towards the west, while trying to escape, first from the Seljuk Turks and then from the Ottoman Turks. They were known in European languages as Tsiganes (and its derivatives), but they called themselves Rom. By the beginning of the eighteen century in Moldavia the number of Roma people was large enough for Dimitrie Cantemir (twice Prince of Moldavia) to write that “there is no boyar to be found that does not have a few Gypsy families in his possession (Cantemir, 1973, p. 168). However, since the statistical sources of the time did not include slaves, it is impossible to accurately estimate their number.
It was customary for the male children of boyars - who together with clergymen, were the main slave owners- to be send to the West, particularly to France, to carry out their studies. After their return, some of the youth began to speak against Roma slavery. Adding to the (young)
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intellectual liberal voices of the newly returned youth, foreign intellectuals also warned that the country’s slavery was “a great shame” and a “black stain in front of foreigners” (Potra, 1939). At a time when in other countries and in English and French colonies slavery was abolished, Romanian decision makers found themselves in the conflicting and embarrassing situation of wishing to count themselves as part of the “civilised world” while in their newspapers it was advertised “for sale: a young Gypsy woman” (Achim, 1998, p. 98).
After the abolition of slavery, nearly 500 years later (1385-1856), statistics published by the Ministry of Finance in 1857, declared the number of freed Roma in Wallachia to be 33,267 families (out of 466.152 families living in the country) (Filitti, 1931, p. 123). In Moldavia, after the year 1956, Roma people were counted as Romanians for the purposes of tax records and also for ethnic data (Achim, 1998, p. 95).
The idea of freedom for all was not readily embraced in a slave-free Romanian society. The political power was in the hands of former Roma slave owners: the wealthy conservative boyars and the clergy. After the law of emancipation was passed, those that were entitled by law to compensation were not the formerly enslaved Roma people, but their slave owners, who, according to historical documents, were “rewarded” with approximately ten ducats per slave for their willingness to free them (Achim, 1998). Moreover, all taxpaying Roma people were also required to contribute to the slave Compensation Fund. In the rare event that a slave owner refused compensation, he was offered exemption from taxes for a period of ten years. In consequence, Roma people found themselves free, but without any economic and social protection. The laws indicated that the free Roma people were to settle in villages or on estates, but landowners or monasteries were not required to provide their former slaves with land, tools of livestock. Although, in theory, they could have done so, most proved less generous (Potra, 1939). Freedom came with tax burdens, and paradoxically, the rights granted on paper proved to be exploitative in practice.
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Most Roma people began to establish themselves in separate settlements, working as craftsmen and tradesmen, a phenomenon encouraged by the authorities at a time when the reorganisation of rural property and the tax system in the villages was a main priority for political actors. With the exception of a public policy attempt at social assimilation during the Communist years, the physical separation of Roma people was to remain mostly unchanged up to the deportation to Transnistria during 1942 – 1944, where approximately 36.000 adults and 6000 children were killed, and until the present day.
2.2.2. Roma People and the Communist Regime
During the communist regime in Romania (1947-1989) there was a Universalist theory of public policy (Zamfir & Zamfir, 1993), where theoretically there was a general provision of goods and services for the needs of all people. The accent was placed on the ideal of cosmopolitanism, but in practice ideological Universalism turned out to be a surface political attempt of covering up the traces left over from the former political, cultural and economic imperialism.
During this period there was a political attempt of Roma assimilation (Grigore, Neacsu, & Furtuna, 2007) to the non-Roma social and cultural norms. This was achieved mostly through administrative and bureaucratic means, backed up by the various political objectives. For example, there were local level orders denying Roma people from publicly speaking in their own language and for many years they were not allowed to form cultural associations (Helsinki Watch, 1991). Roma people were also not granted the status of ethnic minority.
During Communism, Roma people were not only in a position where the majority population looked down on them as the ethnic-less “others”, they also had to (re)negotiate their own definitions regarding the newly received decorticated identity as “Romanian only” (Neacsu, 2007). The new and simplified label did not sweep under the ideological rug the longstanding
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cultural values, or the centuries of slavery, or the social marginalization that seemed to be attached to the social and political category of Roma. Rather, in Romania the Romanian ethnicity was the desired ideal. In this context, the socially accepted Roma was the one that managed to blend in as much as possible and to look and act as little as possible as the stereotypical prototype collectively known as “Roma”. Also, the Universalist ideology did not root out the existing hierarchies. On paper, Roma ethics had jobs, housing and their children were enrolled in school. However, in practice, assimilation proved to be discriminating, and without legal recognition, any talk about the protection of human rights was a moot point (Helsinki Watch, 1991).
2.2.3. Roma People in Democratic Romania
The post-communist years were generally characterized by a somewhat reluctant acceptance of ethnic diversity, where public ethnic manifestations were finally a legally endorsed possibility. The recognition, even if not the actual celebration, of ethnic diversity allowed Roma people to organize, mobilize and engage politically and culturally (Zamfir & Zamfir, 1993). However, a significant portion of Roma people experienced increased economic and social marginalization (Pons, 1999). In this social context, a group of Roma activists and social scientists started to protest and write about the injustices observed, or in some cases, experienced.
Most of the academic literature on Romanian Roma people was written after 1990. This is not particularly surprising, given the politics of Roma cultural assimilation during the communist period in Romania, a time characterized by a research gap regarding all ethnic minorities. On one hand, the authors publishing their work post 1989 continued the tradition established during the first half of the twentieth century (e.g. Ion Chelcea’s ethnographic studies 1934, 1942, 1944) or after the Second World War (e.g. Nicolae Gheorghe’s Origin of Roma’s slavery in the Romanian Principalities, 1983), writing monographs, ethnographic studies and historical depictions of Roma people. On the other hand, the newer writings brought to the table
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additional analytic interests such as: social policies, inclusion measures, needs assessments and diagnoses (Achim, 1998; Crisan, 1999; Grigore, et al., 2009; Ionescu & Cace, 2000; Nicolae, 2002; Nicolae, 2006a; Nicolae, 2006b; Oprea, 2005; Preoteasa, Cace & Duminica, 2009; Zamfir & Preda, 2002; Zamfir & Zamfir, 1993).
The growing academic and political interest about Roma people in Romania developed in a social context in which university undergraduate and graduate programs in psychology, sociology, social work and anthropology were re-launched after being pushed out of university and academic life during the Communist years. Other developments of consequence were the emergence of social research institutes and centres (e.g. the Research Institute for the Quality of Life - functioning under the auspices of the Romanian Academy, Bucharest; the National Institute of Statistics – a Romanian government agency, Bucharest), and national and international organizations that began offering funding for research relating to Roma people (e.g. ANR, World Bank, Save the Children, Romani CRISS, UNICEF, Open Society Foundation, USAID). These developments resulted in the publication of a growing number of studies, research reports and surveys relating to the Roma minority in Romania, giving rise to a varied number of observations, challenges and recommendations, made by Roma and non-Roma academics and activists for the inclusion of Roma people.
2.3. Disparities between Roma and Non-Roma People in Romania