Then and Now: The Precarious Citizenship of the Roma in Eastern European Modernities

This essay examines the precarious citizenship of the Roma in Central and Eastern Europe since 1945, showing how successive regimes—fascist, communist, and post-communist—recycled entrenched attitudes that sustained exclusion despite institutional change. Imposed “norms of social coexistence,” nested orientalisms, racialized vocabularies, and police-state practices cemented structural exclusions across shifting political landscapes. The study underscores the persistent tension between formal legal recognition and substantive political exclusion, revealing how equal citizenship remains conditional, contingent, and undermined by entrenched discrimination. Ultimately, the Romani story is not only about policy shortcomings but about Europe’s resistance to recentering the conversation. Romani identity has been repeatedly redefined through labor, order, and rights, yet never in partnership with the Roma toward a heterogeneous idea of the common good.