ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the transnational migration of the Roma as part of the larger labor force that was mobilized, exploited, or dismissed by the interests of the political economy of the moment. It shows how culturalist and underclass-based explanations of “Roma migration” might be surpassed. The analyzed materials—which consisted of in-depth interviews, life histories, surveys, and archival data—have been aggregated into a comparative perspective of the work and life trajectories of Roma and non-Roma along a historical trajectory that includes the years of socialist industrialization, the industrial decline period of the 1990s and the 2000s, and the reindustrialization period of the last decade. The author reveals that, during socialism, the Roma were more deeply proletarianized than the non-Roma, which made them particularly vulnerable in postsocialism. After being fired in the first wave of layoffs after 1990, the Roma benefited less from the severance pay deals that other workers obtained later. Similarly, their comparatively poorer access to stable jobs limited their access to social benefits in the socialist era, and many entered a state of chronic financial indebtedness that brought multiple problems associated with long-term poverty. These difficulties directly and negatively affected the migration outcomes of former Roma industrial workers.
