Leaving 'Roma' Behind. Notes on the Impact of Housing and (Forced) Mobility on Education

The main purpose of this paper is to examine relevant literature on the interactions between housing, mobility, poverty/class, and education, without taking into account the 'Roma' variable.

This paper is framed in a larger doctoral research focusing on the intersections between the housing practices and the educational careers of Romanian Roma youths (6-18 years old) living between Madrid and a rural village in southern Romania. The explorative ethnographic work realized until now (spring to winter 2014) has developed within a non-Romani speaking network of families currently living in squatted houses and apartments in an outskirt district of Madrid. Since the first arrivals, in 2007, the residential patterns of these families were characterized by a high heterogeneity of conditions and strategies employed: the self-construction of shacks, the use of motorhomes, the occupation of empty houses or apartments, and the rent. Due mainly to forced evictions, most families went through all these conditions more than once, reaching a high urban mobility. During my fieldwork I have been also observing international circular migration patterns, consisting in households or some of their members moving back to Romania for limited periods of time, and (above all in the last period) more or less definitive returns motivated by the decrease of working/sustenance opportunities in Spain, or other family reasons.