Room to Roma

As I went to buy the morning paper on Friday, a scrawny man with bare feet shuffled along the pavement, carefully selected a spot right outside the shop and threw down his blanket. When I returned a few minutes later he was well settled in, empty disposable coffee cup raised to the passing trade.

It's an increasingly familiar sight. The man in question is a Roma. Oddly, he set up a mere fifty metres from another Roma pitch belonging, if that's the word, to a middle-aged woman who sells the Big Issue. Hers is a good spot, a steady earner…
These two are like chalk and cheese. The woman is part of the street furniture. In Irish terms, she's what you might call first-wave Roma. She's just the ticket for a neighbourhood wanting to be seen to be nice to mendicant immigrants.
The man is different. He's second wave Roma, ragged, barefooted, malnourished and to the Hog reminiscent of wild-eyed beggars encountered on central and Eastern European streets in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the old Soviet order collapsed.
I mentioned him to Lady Hog and she said'oh yeah, I've seen that guy there. He shakes all over'. Which he does. But he wasn't shaking when he was choosing his spot…
Where did he spring from that morning? Is he sleeping somewhere nearby that he emerged from and plonked himself down right there at nine thirty? Or was he driven there and told to earn his keep? It couldn't all be a performance, could it?
And what's he doing in Dublin? I know he's begging, but looking at him shivering there and it only August, inevitably one wonders why he and his family – for surely they're here too – made a lengthy trek to Ireland. To live barefoot? Surely not, but if not, then why?
Who knows? But things are happening beneath the surface of what we see and think we know. Some of them are beyond our control and many challenge what we like to think we believe.
Roma and Travellers are under pressure all across Europe. On one hand, there is a rising tide of populist attacks that has been compared with ethnic cleansing. On the other, there is a growing official clampdown in wealthier states, particularly in Germany, Italy, France and the UK.
Human rights groups allege prejudice and racism and these are factors for sure. But even within nomadic groups there are tensions – many Irish Travellers dislike the Roma because their sometimes aggressive style of hustling alienates people who have traditionally been sympathetic to Travellers and to indigenous mendicants.
Elsewhere in Europe, older Gypsy communities who have traditionally been migrant workers following the harvests also resent the new hustlers. (Isabel Fonseca's ethnographic study Bury Me Standing is fascinating on the differences across Roma culture).
The Roma are frequently accused (and convicted) of criminal activity. Of this, ATM scams, shoplifting and burglaries constitute plain, old fashioned villainy. But in there is also clear and consistent abuse of children.
Just by way of one example, Speranta Mahi was last week sentenced in Reading in the UK to two and a half years in prison for child cruelty. Her crime was to take her children, aged between two and sixteen, begging and stealing across south-east England in a systematic operation.
The police who raided the family were investigating what they believe to be Europe's largest human trafficking ring. It's based in the Romanian town of Tandarei, from which as many as 1,000 children may have been trafficked for benefit fraud, begging and theft…
But remember, we have to recognise that, like the rest of us, the Roma are economic logicians and go where they are best off.
It is not at all implausible that pressure in the bigger EU countries could drive the Roma further west, a prospect enhanced by the support offered by various charities and NGOs to the clans who came here two years ago. These make Ireland seem more caring and generous than other European countries, even though you and I know this is in many respects a misleading impression.
As a result, we could be hosting many more Roma in the near future. When you bear in mind that there are 9million Roma in the European Union and a further 7m outside the gates, and bearing our own economic woes in mind, well, at the very least pause for thought is required.
There is already a substantial influx of Roma. Should it significantly increase, it will challenge a whole range of beliefs and value sets. Some liberals may well become illiberal very fast.
So let's step back for a minute. For sure, we do not want to be overwhelmed. But neither, I think, should we succumb to fear and prejudice. The Portuguese author José Saramago said when he accepted his Nobel Prize for Literature, that he wrote Blindness to remind readers: “…that we pervert reason when we humiliate life, that human dignity is insulted every day by the powerful of our world… that man has stopped respecting himself when he lost the respect due to his fellow creatures.”
Respect for others will need a champion in Europe. That challenge may well fall to the Irish. If so, we'll need to persuade our partners to take responsibility for their own populations, to equalise across rather than down. In particular, we need to have the westward pressure on the Roma eased in Europe.
Regarding what is effectively Europe's lowest caste, that ain't going to be easy. For better or worse, there is little appetite among the settled population anywhere for what the Roma bring to cities and towns. The Roma don't seem much interested in change either.
If we could ignore all this we probably would – but events are outside our control. We need to talk about this now.