The inclusion of highly vulnerable groups: the experience of Roma migrants in France

In recent years, official rhetoric in France and other European countries has often associated Roma migrants from Central Europe and the Balkans with delinquency and marginality. This attitude is what prompted researchers, social workers, associations and Romanian and Bulgarian Roma to come together in Paris, on 5th of November 2011, to study the concrete inclusion actions engaged in by Roma migrants in France. The following paper is a synthesis of the exchanges and discussions that took place at this meeting. It highlights the diversity of the individual and familial trajectories of Roma migrants and the need to take a critical look at the policies directed at these migrants. It also raises general issues concerning means of survival for the poor and their place in our towns today, and the effectiveness of measures for fighting vulnerability in a system which, as we know, is itself increasingly responsible for manufacturing exclusion. Strictly speaking, this is not a scientific paper, but rather a series of reflections based on factual observations. It endeavors to deconstruct pre-conceived ideas and open the way for fresh thinking about the policies to be directed at vulnerable Roma and the fight against vulnerability and exclusion in European societies of the future.

Attachments:

Synthese_FR	237 Kb
Synthesis_EN	385 Kb

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