The Neglected Millions

A Diaspora of 11 Million

Livia Jaroka, a Hungarian anthropologist who has studied the Roma and is the only Roma member of the European Parliament, maintains that decades of discrimination have resulted in endemic unemployment, extreme poverty, low education levels, segregated housing, human trafficking, substance abuse and high mortality rates. She argues that assimilation into Western European culture does not require abandoning Roma traditions as much as overcoming age-old stereotypes and investing in education, jobs and health care.

“The cultural explanation for Roma criminality is nonsense,” she said in an interview. “It is about economics.”

In Spain, which has some 750,000 Roma, nearly half under 25. Nearly all Roma children there finish primary school, according to the Fundació Secretariado Gitano, a Madrid-based foundation, though only a small minority finish high school. In 1978, three-quarters of Spain’s Roma lived in substandard housing; today just 12 percent do. Isidro Rodriguez, the foundation’s director, cited access to free education, health care and social housing following the anti-Roma repression of the Franco years.

Ms. Jaroka, who grew up in a poor community of Roma said “We Roma also need to learn to emancipate ourselves.”