Racialization of Roma, European Modernity, and the Entanglement of Empires

Abstract

The article explores how anti-Roma racism results from the complex interplay of imperial histories and is influenced by racial thinking
shaped by colonialism. Looking at the diverse primary and secondary historiographic resources about Romani people across Europe, the article shows how intra-European hierarchies set the stage for racial logic and points out the complex interplay of factors contributing to anti-Roma racism. Specifically, the article delineates how race, religion, and the rise of capitalism intersect in the racialization of Romani people in Europe, including Eastern Europe. In doing so, I interweave the fields of critical race and critical Romani studies to explore the mechanisms leading to the racialization of Roma. To understand the roots of anti-Roma racism, I examine historical processes of intra- European othering of Romani people as entangled with European modernity and colonialism. The article illuminates how Roma were placed among racialized and itinerant groups of valuable labor while they simultaneously were ostracized and persecuted as “vagrants” and “barbarians,” deemed “unwilling to work,” and inscribed with markers of non-whiteness, foreignness, and criminality. In this way, the capitalist logic established a white European norm in relation to which Roma were constructed and positioned.