CPS Seminar: European mobility, forced evictions and school disengagement among homeless Romanian 'Roma' students living in Madrid

In the next CPS Seminar, INTEGRIM project Research Associate Stefano Piemontese will talk about his book chapter in progress which focuses on the way both international mobility (return or circular migration) and housing-related problems (forced evictions and poor housing conditions) affect the educational expectations and achievements of youth "Roma" living between Spain and Romania.

The research question is based on two considerations.

First, improvements in education are the flagship of a number of European strategic frameworks and all these soft-law instruments set clear benchmarks in education, such as reducing to 10% early school leaving and ensuring that 95% of European children attend kindergarden; in the specific case of the European 'Roma' population, policies should be implemented to ensure primary education and support their access to secondary education.

The second consideration is that poor housing conditions, as well as urban and international mobility, are an important source of stigmatization and racialization of the 'Roma' people in Europe. Their housing patterns are often justified or understood as indissolubly linked to ethnic origin. For instance, perceptions about nomadism influence the way 'Roma' migrants are perceived by public administrators and in some countries shapes public policies addressed to these ethnic groups.

Moving from these assumptions, the starting argument is that we cannot improve education if we do not tackle the factors that impede access to school. Residential instability is one of them.

Book chapter illustration: diagram on mobility and schooling