The insertion of Roma in Sénart Project (2000–2007): a local minority-targeted affirmative action following in the footsteps of the French republican citizenship model

Abstract

Between 2000 and 2007, 34 Romanian families living in shanty towns in a Parisian suburb participated in a local group-specific social integration project. A socio-anthropological study was undertaken 2 years after it ended, including documentary analysis of its archives, interviews with its beneficiaries and the professionals involved and ethnography among three families with distinct integration histories. Using the analysis of the project’s implementation and outcomes, this article sheds light on how exceptional acts of minority identity recognition – sporadic and on a case-by-case basis – were ultimately functional in the performance of a republican redistributive policy on individual access to rights and resources based on the denial of racialised inequalities.

Keywords:

• politics of identity
• redistribution policy
• categorisation
• integration
• Roma

Acknowledgements

This research has been funded by the National Institute for Prevention and Health Education (INPES) and the Institute for the Study on Public Health (IRESP). I gratefully acknowledge the reviews of three anonymous external referees and a member of the editorial board. Warm thanks to the professionals and families who generously participated to the fieldwork.

Notes

1. Cf. http://www.cnle.gouv.fr/Loi-d-orientation-du-29-juillet.html.

2. It is very revealing that when asked who they are, what their origins are, the interviewees responded straightforwardly by naming their villages followed by ‘Timis, in Romania’. When explicitly asked if they weren’t ‘Roma’, they answered: ‘This is what you call us; we are Ţiganii’.

3. At this third stage, 2 new families (12 adults, 14 children) and 12 individuals (7 men, 5 women) who were young adults in couples with young people already taking part in the project were included; in total, there were 8 additional families.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kàtia Lurbe I Puerto

KÀTIA LURBE I PUERTO is Research fellow at the public hospital system of the Parisian Region (AP-HP) and lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Lille 3