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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/10f3bd8c-b214-11df-b2d9-00144feabdc0.html
Roma reveal a rootless Europe
By Christopher Caldwell
Published: August 27 2010 22:32 | Last updated: August 27 2010 22:32
Last week in Lille a Catholic priest announced that he was praying that French president Nicolas Sarkozy would have a heart attack. The priest, Arthur Hervet, who has since retracted his words, is passionate about fair treatment for immigrant gypsies (or Roma, known in France as Roms). They are currently in the French president’s line of fire. In the Loire in mid-July a group of French gypsies (known in France as “travelling people”) attacked a police station with axes. Two weeks later, in Grenoble, Mr Sarkozy launched an “offensive sécuritaire”. He would break up 600 illegal encampments and squats, many of them occupied by immigrants from Romania, and repatriate the inhabitants.
The result has been outrage from the church, from the Socialist opposition and from the Romanian government. Disquiet has also arisen inside Mr Sarkozy’s party, the UMP. Former prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin attacked the policy as part of a “rightward drift”. The controversy concerns, at its heart, whether France is responding to legitimate security concerns – be it over public disorder or immigration – or acting out of racial prejudice. The stakes are high either way.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
More from Christopher Caldwell - Dec-03
One does not want to stoke prejudice against a people who were victims of a Nazi genocide. But there are dangers in being complacent about Roma newcomers, too. There are about 10m Roma in Europe. Although the vast majority are not itinerants, any country that shows itself inclined to accommodate their informal living arrangements will doubtless receive an influx, and Roma communities have high crime rates.
France claims it is abiding by European Union rules in managing the expulsions. It has a point. The majority of “Roms” are citizens of Romania, a newly admitted EU country. During a transitional period until 2014, Romanian citizens can settle in France for only three months, unless they have work. Those being sent back are violating the law. Many have been building homes without permission, on property that doesn’t belong to them. The repatriation programmes are by now routine: France sent 11,000 Romanians home last year. Late this week, Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate in the last presidential elections, complained that her party is not addressing public concerns on the issue. Other countries are cracking down on traveller encampments too, including a number of British local authorities.
The problem is that Mr Sarkozy’s measures are being carried out against a backdrop of opportunistic bluster. Of late, Mr Sarkozy has suggested establishing a list of crimes for which French nationality can be stripped from newly naturalised immigrants. These include female circumcision, polygamy and “domestic slavery”. Stripping citizenship for such things is pointless and impracticable, and presumably aimed only at riling people up. Using circumcision to determine belonging is a practice as old as the Old Testament, but that has not usually been a strong argument in republican France. Polygamy has similar problems – any society moving away from marriage as decisively as France has will have a good deal of de facto polygamy. To penalise de jure polygamy seems a bit legalistic.
France needs a pretext to crack down because its immigration policy is marked by an unwillingness to assert national interest. European governments squeamishly claim to be acting in the name of universal principle, or even in the interests of immigrants themselves. The French government describes its expulsions of Roma as an “action humanitaire”, while its Europe secretary, Pierre Lellouche, calls them a blow against “human trafficking”.
According to the government, most of the expulsions are “voluntary” – France pays the expellees €300 per adult and €100 per child to help them get a start back in their native countries. Those who start small businesses in Romania are eligible for up to €3,600 in grants. But these transfers are the sign not of generosity but of a guilty conscience. If there actually is a security rationale for breaking up Roma camps, shouldn’t the violator be paying the government?
Last weekend, the Pope, speaking in French, urged politicians to “accept legitimate kinds of human diversity”. Clearly he was addressing the French situation, and he had the right conception of the problem, which is that there is a clash between the diversity of individuals (a principle that the modern liberal state upholds in an almost absolutist way), and the diversity of communities (a principle it holds in utter contempt).
If we bear this in mind, we will see that when people talk about the Roma as “stateless”, they are only half correct. No individual Rom is stateless in the way those fleeing Nazi persecution in the 1930s were. Any adult Rom can vote in Romania. But as a people they are stateless. And there can be little doubt that they are a people, their identity formed by centuries of cultural choices.
That is why suggestions that France “integrate” the Roms – by, for instance, giving them more access to educational opportunities, as George Soros suggested this week – get the wrong end of the stick. Integration as policymakers understand it is not necessarily what the Roma want. Where nation-states are strong, such questions are easily resolved – the state decides what newcomers can aspire to. But as individual EU nation-states have given up their monopoly on government, new crypto-national claims are being asserted within them. The question that will have to be addressed before long is whether Roma folkways deserve special respect as part of what the Pope calls “human diversity” – and where.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/10f3bd8c-b214-11df-b2d9-00144feabdc0.html
Roma reveal a rootless Europe
By Christopher Caldwell
Published: August 27 2010 22:32 | Last updated: August 27 2010 22:32
Last week in Lille a Catholic priest announced that he was praying that French president Nicolas Sarkozy would have a heart attack. The priest, Arthur Hervet, who has since retracted his words, is passionate about fair treatment for immigrant gypsies (or Roma, known in France as Roms). They are currently in the French president’s line of fire. In the Loire in mid-July a group of French gypsies (known in France as “travelling people”) attacked a police station with axes. Two weeks later, in Grenoble, Mr Sarkozy launched an “offensive sécuritaire”. He would break up 600 illegal encampments and squats, many of them occupied by immigrants from Romania, and repatriate the inhabitants.
The result has been outrage from the church, from the Socialist opposition and from the Romanian government. Disquiet has also arisen inside Mr Sarkozy’s party, the UMP. Former prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin attacked the policy as part of a “rightward drift”. The controversy concerns, at its heart, whether France is responding to legitimate security concerns – be it over public disorder or immigration – or acting out of racial prejudice. The stakes are high either way.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
More from Christopher Caldwell - Dec-03
One does not want to stoke prejudice against a people who were victims of a Nazi genocide. But there are dangers in being complacent about Roma newcomers, too. There are about 10m Roma in Europe. Although the vast majority are not itinerants, any country that shows itself inclined to accommodate their informal living arrangements will doubtless receive an influx, and Roma communities have high crime rates.
France claims it is abiding by European Union rules in managing the expulsions. It has a point. The majority of “Roms” are citizens of Romania, a newly admitted EU country. During a transitional period until 2014, Romanian citizens can settle in France for only three months, unless they have work. Those being sent back are violating the law. Many have been building homes without permission, on property that doesn’t belong to them. The repatriation programmes are by now routine: France sent 11,000 Romanians home last year. Late this week, Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate in the last presidential elections, complained that her party is not addressing public concerns on the issue. Other countries are cracking down on traveller encampments too, including a number of British local authorities.
The problem is that Mr Sarkozy’s measures are being carried out against a backdrop of opportunistic bluster. Of late, Mr Sarkozy has suggested establishing a list of crimes for which French nationality can be stripped from newly naturalised immigrants. These include female circumcision, polygamy and “domestic slavery”. Stripping citizenship for such things is pointless and impracticable, and presumably aimed only at riling people up. Using circumcision to determine belonging is a practice as old as the Old Testament, but that has not usually been a strong argument in republican France. Polygamy has similar problems – any society moving away from marriage as decisively as France has will have a good deal of de facto polygamy. To penalise de jure polygamy seems a bit legalistic.
France needs a pretext to crack down because its immigration policy is marked by an unwillingness to assert national interest. European governments squeamishly claim to be acting in the name of universal principle, or even in the interests of immigrants themselves. The French government describes its expulsions of Roma as an “action humanitaire”, while its Europe secretary, Pierre Lellouche, calls them a blow against “human trafficking”.
According to the government, most of the expulsions are “voluntary” – France pays the expellees €300 per adult and €100 per child to help them get a start back in their native countries. Those who start small businesses in Romania are eligible for up to €3,600 in grants. But these transfers are the sign not of generosity but of a guilty conscience. If there actually is a security rationale for breaking up Roma camps, shouldn’t the violator be paying the government?
Last weekend, the Pope, speaking in French, urged politicians to “accept legitimate kinds of human diversity”. Clearly he was addressing the French situation, and he had the right conception of the problem, which is that there is a clash between the diversity of individuals (a principle that the modern liberal state upholds in an almost absolutist way), and the diversity of communities (a principle it holds in utter contempt).
If we bear this in mind, we will see that when people talk about the Roma as “stateless”, they are only half correct. No individual Rom is stateless in the way those fleeing Nazi persecution in the 1930s were. Any adult Rom can vote in Romania. But as a people they are stateless. And there can be little doubt that they are a people, their identity formed by centuries of cultural choices.
That is why suggestions that France “integrate” the Roms – by, for instance, giving them more access to educational opportunities, as George Soros suggested this week – get the wrong end of the stick. Integration as policymakers understand it is not necessarily what the Roma want. Where nation-states are strong, such questions are easily resolved – the state decides what newcomers can aspire to. But as individual EU nation-states have given up their monopoly on government, new crypto-national claims are being asserted within them. The question that will have to be addressed before long is whether Roma folkways deserve special respect as part of what the Pope calls “human diversity” – and where.
