115 SIX anti-Roma racism in europe: past and recent perspectives Špela Urh Following the chapter on anti-Semitism, Urh here looks at the history of anti- Roma, anti-Gypsy and anti-traveller racism. Across Europe Roma communities have, historically, suffered from racism and oppression – often a violent and bloody form of political action promoted by national states, by state employees and by far-right groups. Today the rise of far-right organisations (like the Jobbik Party in Hungary, which openly vilifies Hungary’s Roma minority) has brought increasing
59 Critical and Radical Social Work • vol 2 • no 1 • 59–76 • © Policy Press 2014 • #CRSW Print ISSN 2049 8608 • Online ISSN 2049 8675 • http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/204986014X13912564145645 article ‘Everyone is blaming us!’1 Conceptualising current anti-Roma racism in Europe and its necessary implications for anti-racist social work Špela Humljan Urh,2 Germany, spela.h.urh@gmail.com Racism was and has remained a key determining element of the life experiences and life chances of Roma people all around Europe. The author provides some examples of current and
understanding the manifestation of racism in society against particular groups. In the early nineteenth century in Britain the Irish community faced violence, harassment and racist oppression despite being white (Miles and Phizacklea 1984), and Poles, Romanians and Bulgarians are targeted in similar ways today (Fekete 2009). Anti- Jewish racism, or anti-Semitism, anti-Roma racism and anti-Muslim racism, or Islamophobia, may contain a ‘racialised’ component, but they also focus on the supposed ‘alien cultures’ of minority ethnic groups. Cultural racism is no less
broad types of essays in the book. Chapters One to Six focus on issues of race, racism and anti-racist social work theory. This includes discussion and debate over the present nature of racism today and its impact on social work (Fekete, Singh); over the ‘problem’ of black leadership (Williams); over the competing claims of ‘cultural competency’ and antiracist social work (Harrison and Burke); and two chapters that address issues that have not featured as much as they should have within anti-racist social work debates: anti-Roma racism (Urh) and antisemitism
Without a doubt, structural and institutionalised racism is still present in Britain and Europe, a factor that social work education and training has been slow to acknowledge.
In this timely new book, Lavalette and Penketh reveal that racism towards Britain’s minority ethnic groups has undergone a process of change. They affirm the importance of social work to address issues of ‘race’ and racism in education and training by presenting a critical review of a this demanding aspect of social work practice.
Original in its approach, and with diverse perspectives from key practitioners in the field, the authors examine contemporary anti-racism, including racism towards Eastern European migrants, Roma people and asylum seekers. It also considers the implications of contemporary racism for current practice.
This is essential reading for anyone academically or professionally interested in social work, and the developments in this field of study post 9/11.
– reinforced since 2001 by the so-called ‘war on terror’, which has identified Islam as a problematic religion and Muslims as an oppositional community. In its short life, the journal has already covered various aspects relating to the growth of racism and its impact on social work service users and professionals (eg, work with indigenous peoples in Australia (Briskman, 2013), the growth of anti-Roma racism in parts of Eastern Europe (Urh, 2014; Zorn, 2014) the involvement of social workers in the ‘Black Lives Matters’ campaigns in the US (Hooper, 2015). The journal
threat’ (Gover et al, 2020 ). But also other forms of exclusion and devaluation have been observed to be spiralling, including racism against Black people, or anti-Roma racism (Matache and Bhabha, 2020 ). Others have suggested that there are additional marginalization effects brought on by the increasing reliance on digital tools. The already existing digital divide increased further, and not everyone was able to bridge the social distance via digital tools ( Beaunoyer et al, 2020 ). In sum, the pandemic is accentuating pre-existing inequalities but also adding
now been hidden from history. In this issue we are happy to include two articles that make a contribution to this task. The article by Špela Humljan Urh on anti-Roma racism in Slovenia is a Editorial 5 welcome addition to our understanding of a community that is perhaps currently more reviled than any other in Western Europe. The defining event of the Nazi era was, of course, the Holocaust, the systematic murder of six million Jews as well as hundreds of thousands of Gypsies, gay people, socialists and trade unionists. We are privileged therefore to include
Epidemiology Centre . Manning , E. , Corcoran , P. , O’Farrell , I. , de Foubert , P. , Drummond , L. , McKernan , J. , Meaney , S. and Greene , R. ( 2016 ) Severe Maternal Morbidity in Ireland Annual Report 2014 , Cork : National Perinatal Epidemiology Centre . Manning , E. , Leitao , S. , Corcoran , P. , McKernan , J. , de Foubert , P. and Greene , R. ( 2018 ) Severe Maternal Morbidity in Ireland Annual Report 2016 , Cork : National Perinatal Epidemiology Centre . Matache , M. and Bhabha , J. ( 2020 ) ‘ Anti-Roma racism is
, demonstrating how political and professional responses to Roma directly impact on them. The ‘colonial position’ of this population is exacerbated by anti-‘Roma’ racism. This constitutes a multifaceted set of phenomena, altering over time, place and, arguably, sometimes from person to person. Its elaboration is also dependent on the social position that any particular individual or group of Roma find themselves in relative to the wider community. The nature of prejudice is manifested in and through a range of social, cultural and economic factors. However, this complex
