ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines some central problems related to the situation of European Roma, and also outlines historically constituted images of Roma, which position them as internal outsiders in Europe and as nomads. It presents the Danish case and analyses the banalisation of the relevance of Roma as an ethnic category and of nomadism as characteristic of Roma culture. The chapter shows how the Roma on Amager Commons were positioned in the debate as deviant not only in relation to sedentarism but also in relation to perceptions of appropriate mobility. It discusses the securitisation of the Roma presence through the racialisation of space. The chapter addresses the seeming paradox that possibly the most pan-European of all European people is routinely rendered as inappropriate Europeans. Most Roma migrants within the European Union (EU) come from Romania and Bulgaria, where there are relatively large Roma minorities who are and historically were subject to widespread contempt and discrimination.
