ABSTRACT
The eviction of families from historically nationalized and recently restituted houses in Romania is tied in complicated ways to postsocialist transitional justice policies. Delayed enactment of restitution legislation and inconsistent application leave families, and neglected houses, in a precarious state. As families remain in place, they create a politics that pushes against dispossession. Evidence of this push comes from a study of Roma families, who are arguably the most marginalized of Romania’s low-income peoples. Theoretically, we draw on Butler and Athanasiou’s understanding of precarity and dispossession and Askins’s emotional citizenry, from which we find a glimmer of hope in the everyday performance of the political among threatened families.
