Regulating the Poverty of Roma Migrants: the French, Italian, and Spanish Cases
Abstract
First lines: Generally speaking, the presence of foreigners in precarious situations appears to be a recurring problem for local governments. More than the difficulties encountered by migrants, it is the “vision of foreign poverty” that raises concerns(1). Public officials therefore often pursue interventions that oscillate between conditional integration and “expulsion”. While these policies are fairly well documented, their medium and long-term effects remain obscure.
Yet these policies, combining acts of rejection (evacuation of shantytowns, expulsion of people) with local housing and inclusion policy instruments, have serious consequences on the lives of the people concerned. Drawing on this observation, we undertook a research project* aiming to study these effects by examining the case of Roma migrants in French, Italian and Spanish cities.
