Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
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Chapter 5 • Giuseppe De Sario, Laura Corradi, Patricia Ruiz, Enrica Capussotti<br />
old and young people. While there was less “urgency” to return in the<br />
accounts of men who had immigrated to Italy at the beginning of the<br />
1990s, they also reported that they would like to live in Kosovo, if the economic<br />
and social situation there was better.<br />
The Romany also positioned themselves as victims in conversations about<br />
their history as a people, and yet they described themselves in a way that<br />
was neither silent nor passive. Instead, they used their victimized position<br />
to express themselves, their identity and culture, and to claim rights and<br />
recognition for the hardships they had seen.<br />
I don’t talk only for myself but as the Roma population… in our history<br />
we have never attacked another population, we are known as pacifists…<br />
we are never for the war and there [in Kosovo] we were in-between…<br />
trapped between two nationalisms… [Tahir]<br />
We are a bit of a strange population because no one takes care of us, the<br />
newspapers and TV never talk about our problems… we are outside of<br />
all discourses… [Andri]<br />
No one talks about our things… just nomads, nomads, nomads… [Blerta]<br />
Up to this point we can say that we have done so much to come here and<br />
all are against us, not only Serbs and Albanians… we are all around<br />
Europe and just 1 person of 1,000 wants to help this Rom… [Sofia]<br />
In this last quotation, past and present merge together into a reality of continuous<br />
discrimination: the Romany have managed to escape the<br />
Albanians and the Serbs, and yet they are still pursued by prejudice and<br />
poverty in Italy and throughout Europe. In some of the interviews, the<br />
open discrimination was explained by the historical lack of political organization<br />
amongst Romany. The fact that they had no politicians, no police,<br />
no representatives in any institutions was emphasized as one of the reasons<br />
why the Romany could not counter the violence that has been aimed<br />
against them. According to some studies about the Romany living in post-<br />
Communist countries, an effort is being made to organize some of the<br />
population into Roma political parties and institutions, but the process<br />
seems quite problematic, both because of the lack of what we might call a<br />
western idea of politics, and because of opposition from other non-Roma<br />
parties. (Barany, 1995, 1998). In his account, Tahir stated that the Romany<br />
had tried to organize, in order to better deal with the conflict of Kosovo,<br />
but that the Serbs had opposed and suppressed their attempts at uniting.<br />
The conflicts and Diaspora experiences thus created a new situation for the<br />
Romany in Kosovo, excluding them from the public sphere, just as they<br />
had been in other eastern European countries. In Italy, the Romany have<br />
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