I am.
The purpose of this work is providing an analysis of the real situation of the Roma minority in the current context of the enlarged European Union and the recipient of the benefits of free movement guaranteed by the Schengen agreements. While these agreements have allowed all European citizens to move freely from one country to another in order to improve their economic and social conditions, on the other hand, they have certainly contributed to the worsening of the situation of the Roma , whereas their movement triggers discriminatory and xenophobic attitudes. A story of an emargination, but also of hope in a better world.
I am . I’m a gypsy. People call me so, “gypsy”, because they believe that I am an inhabitant of the world, given my constant aimlessly wandering. Really no places belong to me: I have not a house, nor a country. In theory this lack of belonging to something or someone gives me the freedom to move, to live around the world and meet new cultures. But I can’t do it. I can only touch the barriers, physical or simply cultural and mental, that others rise to defend themselves, or hear the contempt of the people, read the fear in their eyes.
I can do only this. This made my ancestors. They were slaves, brutally tortured and persecuted for centuries. In concentration camps almost 500,000 Gypsies were killed. But not a word about them, not even a sentence. Only silence around us. A deafening silence, but I can distinguish the cries, the tears and despairs of those who died without leaving a trace. Could almost be considered an invisible people. But if only people abandon those silly fears and ideas about the purity of the breed, the national identity, the borders as the symbol of a nation, maybe, just maybe, someone would notice us . I am Europe. I am Europe of tolerance, solidarity. One that is not afraid to include different people, because diversity is not a problem, but a fortune. I am a product of globalization, with its cultural, political, economic and social transformations that force us to rethink and, in some cases, to redefine our identity, our vision of the word, our concept of the citizenship. I am Europe as much as dreamed by its founding fathers, made of people and by people, and not only by politicians and bureaucrats belonging to the caste of Brussels. But if it is true that the European Union is founded with the aim of uniting the peoples and states, then it is equally true to say that the Roma are Europe. Am I Europe? And in what sense? Habermas suggests to face the challenges of globalization ( the collapse of the nation state and the redefinition of the concept of citizenship), creating a supranational space basing on interpersonal relationships, a space conceived as an experience of diversity, because only by accepting the diversity is possible to protect own identity. You can not ignore, as the same Gadamer remember us, that Europe's main feature is its variety of differences, which must be preserved and donated to the world. So if Europe's task is to capture and share the art of learning from others, then it must be opened a dialogue between people from different cultures to create a society s-confined, in which the Other is not relegated within a given territory, but is free to move over every division, be it geographically and culturally. Then modernity redraws the political and social space: geographical boundaries become thinner and unable to continue to maintain the role of differentiating between what is inside (We) and what is outside (Others), ascribed since ancient times. But national identities continue to resist in front of the Other, creating imaginary boundaries or barriers to separate them from us. Go to the refugee camps and you r will realize that these words are true: we force the Roma to wear the dress of the stranger, to live in slums which become a symbol of urban contempt, not to have historical memory, since they do not recognize as additional Holocaust victims. I don’t want to be Europe of violence, of intolerance, of fear. Help me to love you, and to be loved by you. It is not impossible.
