Epistemic (de-)colonization in the midst of Europe

ABSTRACT

Roma in Europe are suffering from manifold injustices and are subject to serious discrimination; carried out both interpersonally as well as institutionally. As with most forms of oppression, the oppression of Roma has a long history in Europe. This paper shows how a genealogy of the oppression of Roma in Europe provides a more adequate understanding of the oppression that Roma face within Europe nowadays. Furthermore, the paper delineates the particular epistemic features of said oppression with the help of some examples and argues that it takes three forms: epistemic segregation, dominant intelligibility frameworks of white supremacy, and dismissal of ‘the right to be known’. The paper then uses the epistemic dimension of the ongoing oppression to argue that Roma can be accurately described as (a) internally colonized subjects and (b) as suffering from internal colonization – in the midst of Europe.

KEYWORDS:

• Epistemic injustice
• decolonization
• oppression of Roma

1. Introduction

According to the German Federal Agency for Civic Education, there are currently 8–12 million Roma¹ living in Europe; most of them in the East and Southeast of Europe.² Many of whom live below the poverty threshold, often in slums and without access to proper sanitation, education, or paid labor. Roma in Europe are suffering from manifold injustices and are subject to serious discrimination; carried out both interpersonally as well as institutionally. In a time, in which racist practices and other forms of injustice have finally raised awareness – even if not nearly enough – the suffering of Roma is mostly ignored; in fact, Aidan McGarry has recently described the oppression of Roma as ‘the last acceptable form of racism’ (2017, cover).³ To understand the oppression that Roma face nowadays and to adequately characterize many – even seemingly well-meaning or neutral – stereotypes of Roma as deeply problematic, the paper starts by giving a brief genealogy of Roma in Europe (Section 2). This genealogy will then be used to argue that Roma can be accurately described (a) as internally colonized subjects (Section 3) and (b) as suffering from epistemic colonization – in the midst of Europe (Section 4).⁴ Understanding Roma as colonial subjects can unmask a specific genealogy that helps to understand contemporary mistreatment that Roma suffer from as mistreatment. This paper takes a specific focus on the epistemic dimension of such a mistreatment and how is relates to the epistemic dimension of colonization; it identifies three distinct aspects: epistemic segregation, dominant intelligibility frameworks, and the ‘right to be known’ (Lackey 2022).

2. A (brief) genealogy of the oppression of Roma

This section aims to give a brief overview of the oppression that Roma have suffered in Europe and its causal links to the injustices many Roma still face nowadays. A focus lies on the epistemic dimension of their oppression. The history of Roma in Europe is a history of enslavement (mostly in Southeast Europe), exploitation, forced labor, impoverishment, sterilization and mass murder during the Holocaust. In fact, a historical Romanian document states that the ‘first document stating the presence of Roma in Romania dates from October the 3rd 1385, when the ruler Dan Vodă confirms the gift of forty gypsy⁵ slaves for the Vodiţă Monastery’ (Rolly 2013, 45–46). Enslavement, exploitation, forced labor, impoverishment, sterilization, and mass murder are all forms of oppression that are institutionalized and not the result of incidental and interpersonal mistreatment. In the following, I use particular examples to show the link between institutionalized oppression and intelligibility frameworks (as well as other epistemic aspects of such an oppression).

But before I do so, let me illustrate the institutionalized character of the oppression of Roma using Germany as an example. The first written mention of ‘Cigäwnär’ in Germany is dated to 1407 or 1424 describing people without former residency who were camping in front of the city walls, trading goods, and were suspected of theft. During the Reichstag to Freiburg in 1498, Sinti and Roma were declared as outlaws and either displaced or forced into labor camps (cf. Opfermann 2016). After the foundation of the German empire in 1871, Sinti and Roma with German citizenship were found constitutionally equal; however, they were regarded as a disruptive factor for capitalist production due to their history as travelers and forced to settle and assimilate – this being an early moment in which the institutionalized displacement and exclusion of Sinti and Roma is framed as ‘history as travelers’, thus, constructing ‘traveling’ as a natural feature of Sinti and Roma, which in turn masks the oppression of Sinti and Roma. Sinti and Roma without German citizenships were deported; to this end, any traveling groups were reported to the so-called ‘Zigeunerzentrale’ (central office for G*) in Munich, where over 14,000 files were collected till 1925. After the first world war, legal regulations were designed with the purpose to initiate arbitrary measures against Sinti and Roma (cf. Opfermann 2016; Tittel 2020).

The 14.000 files collected by the ‘Zigeunerzentrale’ played a major role in the persecution of Sinti and Roma before and during the Holocaust. Around 1935, racial persecution started in line with the Nuremberg laws and Sinti and Roma became the target of experiments; often in the name of medicine (cf. Eisenbichler 2012; Sparing 2014). The so-called ‘Rassenhygienische Forschungsstelle’ (a racial hygiene research unit of Nazi Germany’s Health Office) run by Robert Ritter collected and wrote over 24,000 ‘Rassegutachten’ (race reports) that functioned as a primary motivator for the following genocide. Starting in 1936, Sinti and Roma were systematically deported to concentration camps such as Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Buchenwald as well as labor camps and ghettos. In 1942, Heinrich Himmler declared the ‘Ausschwitz-Erlass’ (Ausschwitz decree) and in 1943, 23,000 Sinti and Roma were deported to the G*-camp in Ausschwitz-Birkenau; in 1944, only 4,500 of deported Sinti and Roma were still alive, 2,900 of which were murdered that same year, while the rest was brought to Buchenwald and Ravensbrück and forced to labor. Others, who had not died from hunger, illness or forced labor were deported to extermination camp Chelmo in 1942. Sources estimate a total of 220,000–500,000 Sinti and Roma were murdered in Europe during the Third Reich (cf. Eisenbichler 2012).⁶ Yet, it took until 2012 for Germany to recognize the mass murder of Sinti and Roma in Nazi Germany (Zwick 2019).

The end of Nazi Germany does not mark the end of oppression of Sinti and Roma in Germany. In 1946, the criminal police in Munich established a special task force for so-called ‘Zigeunerfragen’ (questions regarding G*) for which they used both the collected documents from 1899 as well as Ritter’s personnel from the Third Reich (Marsen 2009). Victims of deportation and forced sterilization received no reparation from the German state as it was argued that they were not targeted for racist reasons but as criminals and asocials (cf. Wippermann 2015, 14) – again, masking the oppression by constructing innate features of Sinti and Roma. In 1953, a ‘Landfahrerordnung’ (traveler order) was put in place in Bavaria, that showed significant similarities with the law in 1926, and a ruling of the federal court of justice argued in 1956 that ‘Gypsies are prone to crime, especially theft and fraud’. And, that ‘[t]hey often lack the impulses to respect other people’s property because like primitive men, they have an unrestrained instinct for occupation’ (RomAnity 2023; my translation). The travel order was in place until 1970 (RomAnity 2023). What can be seen from this brief genealogy is the role institutions play in the oppression of Roma as well as in legitimizing – and, thus, masking – said oppression by constructing an ‘asocial’ Romani identity that has a hold on Roma even after the derogatory description of Roma as G* was problematized.

Unsurprisingly, Roma are still subjected to oppression in Europe. The Council of the European Union recently issued a statement drawing attention to the fact that many Roma have only limited access to clean water, sanitary infrastructure and healthcare services, including vaccination services (2021, 3). Other problems include low school enrollment rates and high levels of adult illiteracy that correspond ‘to unemployment, low income and a comparatively low life expectancy’ (Rolly 2020, 156). These problems reveal another layer of the intersection between institutionalized oppression and the construction of identity features that are then taken to be natural and, thus, mask the oppression. The oppression of Roma and the legitimate distrust of democratic institutions due to the suffering that Roma communities have had to endure over centuries are re-interpreted into Roma communities as law-less, family-value driven in-groups that refuse social and political interaction with the wider society (cf. Giere 1996; MacLaughlin 1999; Nariman et al. 2020; Robel 2015) For example, research shows that Romani pupils do not receive good education in schools (cf. Bhopal 2004; Warrington 2007; Macura-Milovanović et al. 2013); often linking the problem to underachievement and poor attendance issues (cf. Bhopal et al. 2000; Baucal et al. 2004; O’Hanlon and Holmes 2004; Symeou et al. 2009). However, there is research that shows Romani families’ concerns about their children’s education (Dean 2007; Levinson 2007; Myers and Bhopal 2009). This research shows that Roma parents

feel that their children do not receive the quality of education they are entitled to; sometimes reflecting the failure of schools to deliver a culturally appropriate curriculum and sometimes suggesting schools do not deliver education provision of the same quality received by [other] children (Lloyd and McCluskey 2008; Bhopal and Myers 2008; Macura-Milovanović et al. 2013)

problems that can be linked to ongoing discrimination due to persistent prerogative stereotypes of Roma – including their children. Roma parents also report fears about racism at schools and are concerned for the safety of their children – both on the way to school and within schools (cf. Bhopal et al. 2000; Clark and Greenfields 2006; Macura-Milovanović 2006; Myers et al. 2010). Here, masked institutionalized oppression has deep epistemic consequences insofar as Roma are denied the epistemic tools needed to convey their experiences to those outside their communities in words the majority understands.⁷ Thus, making it at best hard and at worst impossible to protest their ill-treatment.

For this reason, reports on Roma communities have to be repeated with caution for the following two reasons: First, oppression is masked by twisting the results of centuries of exclusion, exploitation, and violence into character traits that all Roma exhibit qua their being Roma; such as the stereotype that Roma have their own moral radar and are only loyal to their own community. Second, there is – as Rolly (2020, 157) argues – a distinction between the visible and the invisible Roma.⁸ Poor Roma that are excluded from social and political life in European countries are often made visible and are the focus of research on Roma. Yet, a large part of Roma are fully integrated (often to the point of forced assimilation), live in neighborhoods not associated with Roma and often deny their own identity as Roma for fear of discrimination. These are the invisible Roma. The distinction between visible and invisible Roma points to another interesting epistemic aspect: The dominant intelligibility frameworks only allow for Roma to have the identity constructed by their oppressors, thus, making only those confirming the problematic identity-construction visible, while masking other identities that Roma have – trapping them in a loop that routinely affirms the existing stereotypes. Furthermore, the invisibility of ‘fully integrated’ Roma should not necessarily count as a sign of lesser oppression; after all, the fear of discrimination is as much a tool of oppression than forms of exclusion. In other words, the choice between suffering from discrimination and exclusion or from being invisible – although making it possible to avoid physical harm – is not a real choice and point to yet another epistemic problem described by Lackey (2022) as a dismissal of the ‘right to be known’.

What can be seen is that epistemic aspects of institutionalized oppressions can take (at least) three forms: epistemic segregation, dominant intelligibility frameworks, and the right to be known. In the case of Roma, the first is tightly linked to socio-spatial segregation, the second to problematic stereotypes centering around criminalization and the third to recognition of multi-facetted identities. Let me turn to each respectively.

Epistemic Segregation. Socio-spatial segregation plays a major role in the cycle of oppression that Roma face. Segregation can be in place anywhere (for example, in schools or housing districts) and is most basically defined as a form of exclusion. However, it is underpinned by the assumption that not all members of a state are equal and that some deserve different or lesser treatment than others. Segregation is both symbolically and materially harmful and these two dimensions often play together in creating a trap for those segregated; with deeply harmful epistemic consequences. Segregated residents often have less infrastructural means to get to work or school or hear about work opportunities and ‘possessing an address known as being in a Roma neighbourhood means that job applications are rejected outright’ (cf. FRA 2009, 5; McGarry 2017, 128). Hence, as other studies have shown as well, segregation limits access to education and labor, which reinforces the same direct discrimination that has helped to generate segregation in the first place (cf. Wilson 1978).

This is an important lesson: Segregation is not something that happens accidentally but is created by public policies and political decisions – it is a major tool for institutionalized oppression. One major drive of segregation is evictions and destruction of neighborhoods by state and local authorities (including police and municipalities), as can be seen all over Europe and are often deliberately targeting Roma with the aim to disperse communities and families (cf. McGarry 2017, 130). In fact, the Fundamental Rights Agency reported in 2011 that 30 percent of Roma stated that their living conditions were due to eviction or relocation by state authorities (FRA 2011; McGarry 2017, 129).⁹ For example, in 1987, officials in Košice (Slovakia) designed a ‘social experiment’ and relocated huge numbers of Roma residents, who have before lived in town houses in the city center, to Lunik IX, a suburb built in 1979 (cf. Hušová 2010; Magdolenová 2003) . Here, ‘Roma were crammed into flats, sometimes with several unrelated families sharing an apartment, and the number of Roma inhabiting Lunik IX swelled to approximately 6,000 people’ (McGarry 2017, 157). Roma residents were also relocated from other parts of the city, mostly due to a modernization effort of the city center; in fact, part of the public-private partnership that was tasked to ‘beautify’ the city was a plan to evict more than 20,000 Roma from the city center to substandard housing (cf. Farnam 2003). Furthermore, the residents of Lunik IX have no say in the means of infrastructure, resulting in the ongoing deterioration of it. For example, the council reduced the waste collection services and utility companies cut off services; currently, only one block of Lunik IX has electricity and water, most of the 6000 residents live without electricity, running water or heating. Once they were segregated, it became much harder for Roma residents to compete on the open labor market, which in turn meant that unemployment rose, trapping ‘people in a cycle of poverty and exclusion, one that fuels anti-Roma prejudices’ (2017, 159). While Košic became the European City of Culture in 2013, surrounding districts to Lunik IX built a 2 meter high wall to segregate Roma residents further.

Segregation is a tool of institutionalized oppression that functions by robbing Roma of a functioning infrastructure and, thus, cutting them of from the means to take control over their lives (cf. Picker 2017). Trizla in Macedonia is another paradigm example of how segregation impacts infrastructure, which in turn means that people fail to receive post, insurance money or welfare due to the lack of officially registered street names, have to navigate unmaintained and unlit streets, and don’t have access to health care facilities within a reasonable distance; in fact, an ambulance called for an emergency can take up to an hour due to the condition of the streets and the place being literally ‘off the map’ in comparison to the 10 min that it should take (cf. McGarry 2017, 138). Segregation is also a deliberate attempt to ghettoize and ostracize communities to rob them of their capabilities to resist the oppression that made it possible to ghettoize them in the first place; part of these are epistemic capabilities of forming marginalized epistemic resources and tools, which can be used to build counternarratives, or saving epistemic resources from communities long gone and, thus, strengthening communal ties.

On top of the already dire conditions designed as means to control by governments, the continuous threat of random uprooting suffocates all interest in turning one’s makeshift community into a better and safer place as well as destroying the imagination and hope of better places to live for future generations, who have never lived anywhere else nor met anyone from outside of their segregated places. Furthermore, physical segregation fosters distrust and hostility and therewith traps Roma in a cycle between external and internal exclusion. These dynamics are incredibly complex; for example, in response to facing conditions of oppression, some communities might deliberately choose segregation as a means to foster an identity or simply for survival in an otherwise hostile world, while others try to hide their Romani identity to become invisible.

Dominant frameworks of intelligibility and the right to be known. Another epistemic aspect of Roma oppression concerns dominant intelligibility frameworks that affect the identity of Roma as well as their (epistemic) inclusion. Centuries of oppression, exclusion, discrimination, and stigmatization of Roma through state authorities and institutional mechanisms have resulted in prejudices, stereotypes, and resentments that are deeply rooted within European societies. For example, Roma ‘lifestyle’ is for many linked to ‘obsolete patriarchal traditions, human trafficking, child labour and juvenile delinquency, strategic begging and stealing’ (Rolly 2020, 157). That is to say, a common prejudicial link exists between Roma and criminalization; for example, the Leipzig Authoritarianism Study conducted in Germany in 2022 showed that between 30 and 60 percent (strongly depending on the county within Germany) of the interviewees thought that ‘Sinti and Roma tend to be criminal’ (Koch 2010, 255; Tittel 2020, 2; Decker et al. 2022, 71).¹⁰ In fact, Tittel shows that the image of Sinti and Roma ‘has become associated with criminality to a much greater extent than that of any other minority’ (2020, 2; see also Tittel 2022); with police work making use of racial profiling against Roma (cf. End 2019; van Baar et al. 2019).

The link between Romani identity and criminalization has a long genealogy; i.e. Roma has been systematically stigmatized as criminals in both written text, drawings and photography. According to Tittel’s research (2022), we can find pictures of Roma depicted as criminals as a warning for a wide illiterate population publicized on official buildings, town gates, and border crossings as early as the seventeenth century. Further, depictions of legal proceedings and public executions (that have much in common with Europe’s witch hunt) have been used to establish Roma as a threat to all decent citizens. With the introduction of photography, depictions of Roma were used to depict Roma as criminals by the police and other political institutions; here, Tittel (2022) argues further that the representation of Roma as posing a threat underwent a change towards more subtle forms of depiction with the aim to generalize from a few individuals to a whole group of people (perceived to be) Roma. This is in line with research indicating that people depicted in so-called ‘mug shots’ evoke the association of criminality and that such depictions are more commonly used for some social groups. This phenomenon is well-documented with regard to Black people and their association with criminality in the United States (cf. Bierria 2014 and 2022; Saint-Croix forthcoming).

This points to two important and interrelated epistemic aspects: First, the identity of Roma is socially authored¹¹ by their oppressors in ways that function to uphold the status quo of oppression and exclusion. Instead of making Romani identity intelligible in its multi-facetted way, their identity is constructed solely along the lines of criminality, asociality, and distrust. This construction works both explicitly, for example, in the case of mug shots (as discussed above) and implicitly, for example, in the seemingly neutral stereotype of Roma as travelers, as possessing the power to curse others or as having their own moral compass of loyalty within family networks. The identity construction from outside is then masked by being presented as an innate and natural character trait of all Roma, which can then be used to justify the unequal treatment of all Roma as a group. Furthermore, having their identity constructed in this way, Roma are robbed of the possibility to construct their own identity (cf. McGarry 2014), epistemic resources, counter-narratives that are a necessary part of resistance to the ongoing oppression – after all, who would believe the words of a criminal? The acts and practices of Roma are, thus, only intelligible within the dominant framework according to which Roma are necessarily criminal or drawn to criminality.

This relates to the discussion of epistemic reparations and what it means to be known. Jennifer Lackey (2022) has recently argued that a significant part of epistemic reparations is the right to be known, to being able to tell one’s story. She recounts the story of a victim of apartheid-era police brutality, Lucas Baba Sikwepere, who gave testimony before the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. According to her argument, telling one’s story is a powerful and transformative act that goes beyond the mere act of talking or testifying. In fact, and this aspect should sound familiar from recognition theory, it is a vital human need "to be listened to and heard by other people" (Lackey 2022, 54). The important insight here is that through telling we can construct our own identity and being recognized as persons with moral standing – an act that is taken away from Roma when their identity is re-authored.

Having given an albeit brief summary of the institutionalized oppression of Roma – illustrated with the example of Germany – and having argued for the epistemic dimension within said oppression, let me turn to making a case for understanding said oppression as a form of colonization and, thus, Roma as colonial subjects – or, in line with the idea of internally displaced persons: as internally colonized subjects.

3. Roma as internally colonized subjects

When we speak of colonization what we mostly have in mind is settler colonization; that is, European colonization elsewhere. Settler colonization in this sense describes the imperial projects of early modern European nation states and the rise of settler colonial empires such as the United States in the fifteenth century. These were systematic projects of ‘cultural domination and geopolitical expansion that included large-scale physical, psychological, epistemic and cultural violence’ (Ruíz 2021, 542). Settler colonialism has both material (including political, economic, physical, and social) and epistemic dimensions and often functions with the help of unjust institutionalized practices; resonating with the examples of the oppression of Roma in Europe discussed before. Important for the purpose of this paper is the way in which colonialism establishes knowledge systems and frames of intelligibility that both privilege European powers and mask the violence committed; thus, making it difficult to identify, preserve, and use the knowledge of colonial subjects (cf. de Certeau 1988; Spivak 1988; Boone and Urton 2011) – the result of what can be called epistemicide; i.e. ‘the massive destruction of ways of knowing that did not fit the dominant epistemological canon’ (de Sousa Santos 2014, 238).

According to Ruíz and Berenstain, we can adequately understand the masking of structural oppression within colonial systems as hermeneutical violence: a ‘technique developed to harm and destroy Indigenous systems of meaning and interpretation so they can be forcibly replaced with colonial governance structures’ (Ruíz and Berenstain 2021, 285; cf. Ruíz 2020). Fanon emphasizes this point when talking about decolonization – the practice of changing the colonial order of the world:

Decolonization, as we know, is a historical process: that is to say it cannot be understood, it cannot become intelligible not clear to itself except in the exact measure that we can discern the movements which give it historical form and content. (1963, 36)

Oppressive structures – and especially oppressive structures that become systemic and institutionalized – are masked by such hermeneutical violence.

Anti-colonial activism and anti-colonial epistemologies are thus tightly connected and can be found in indigenous, native and aboriginal practices of resistance against European oppression and domination. While these include armed and violent conflict, many of the practices encompass or are grounded in epistemic resistance by describing systems and practices of European colonization and (re)discovering knowledge systems that stand in opposition to the colonial powers. In fact, as Ruíz (2021, 544) describes, the popularity of the term decolonial can be traced back to Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano’s article in 2000, in which ‘the conventional historical association between enlightenment, development and modernity’ is unmasked as ‘a larger cultural strategy of power and domination by western Europe’ (Ruíz 2021, 544) that is grounded in white supremacy and corresponding racial hierarchies. The turn to epistemology and its function in colonialism became a necessary part of decolonial theory; the task at hand being to unmask and undo the link between objectivity as proclaimed by white supremacist epistemology and colonialism not by reversing colonialism – a task that might very well be impossible, as Táíwò (2022) argues – but by analyzing its impact on our social practices nowadays (cf. de Sousa Santos 2007; Grosfoguel 2007; Lugones 2003; Mignolo 1999, 2001, 2007; Maldonado-Torres 2007; Posholi 2020) and by finding openings for truly emancipatory change (cf. Botha et al. 2021; Lugones 1987, 2006; Nwosimiri 2022; Wiredu 1995).¹²

In an interesting turn, these colonial frames of intelligibility often also mask the fact that colonialism is not only happening ‘very far away’ – both understood geographically and historically – but sometimes in the midst of Europe; a fact that is understood only too well by colonial subjects both in the present and past. Post- and decolonial theorists therefore distinguish between external and internal colonialism. External colonialism is based on exploitation and expropriation insofar as it describes the extraction of ‘Indigenous worlds, animals, plants and human beings’ (Tuck and Yang 2012, 4) to grow the wealth and power of settlers and colonizers; external colonialism is historically linked to military invasion and other forms of military violence. Internal colonialism, on the other hand, describes ‘the biopolitical and geopolitical management’ (Tuck and Yang 2012, 4) of people within the borders of a state with the function to strengthen the supremacy of a white elite. Part of the toolbox of internal colonization regimes is social and epistemic segregation (for example, through prisons and ghettos) and to establish epistemic frames of intelligibility that re-construct the identity of those colonized (for example, through bureaucratic and administrative processes). Hence, my claim: The oppression of Roma can be understood adequately through the lens of internal colonization – especially when we focus on the epistemic dimensions of this case.

I have argued that the oppression of Roma has three epistemic aspect – epistemic segregation, dominant framework of intelligibility, and the right to be known – and that these are in line with practices of internal colonization. Yet, this raises (at least) two questions: The first asks for the benefits of a colonial underpinning in this case. The second is concerned with the lack of a particular geographical location. Let me respond to both respectively. First, speaking of colonialism instead of ‘merely’ oppression implies a specific genealogy and a function of said oppression in the wider context if white supremacy. In fact, a central point of decolonial theory has been to unmask the systemic¹³ and institutionalized suffering of (former) colonial subjects to understand the ways in which current social practices are linked. This is important because colonial practices include strategies to mask their deeply harmful structures of oppression;

keeping oppressed peoples in the dark about the social formation of psychological toolkits for understanding violence is a cultural, counterrevolutionary strategy designed to manipulate social understanding of colonial violence and its structural prevalence”, thus ‘providing cover for the structural dimensions. (Ruíz 2020, 688)

This in turn shows that the suffering that Roma endure nowadays is not the result of their own wrong choices – as a common myth might tell us – but is a direct consequence of ongoing institutionalized oppression.¹⁴

Second, contrary to cases of external colonization (think of the Spanish conquest of the Americas) but also to many cases of internal colonization (for example, the governing practices of Black people in the US or the British control of Northern Ireland; cf. Allen 1969; Turner 2017), the internal colonization of Roma cannot be pinned to a specific geographical space.¹⁵ Instead, Roma in Europe are spread over distinct geographical spaces and are oppressed by distinct state powers and in distinct forms; for example, Roma in Moldova and Wallachia suffered from enslavement (cf. Anderson 2018; CNR 2011), Roma in Turkey suffer primarily from segregation and displacement, and Roma in Germany have suffered from manifold injustices leading up to the attempt to murder them all in the Holocaust. Hence, while we clearly see parallels to well-known cases of internal colonization and especially their epistemic aspects, there are important differences as well. Differences that – or so I will argue – can be resolved when questioning the conflation of ‘state’ and ‘nation’. Roughly, my argument is the following: Thinking of the oppression of Roma as a form of internal colonization seems to suggest that there is a nationhood aspect to the social group of Roma. And, intuitively, we think of nations or nationhood in line with states. Yet, this state-centered understanding of nation is not uncontested and fails to make sense of Roma as a nation with specific rights; for example, rights to self-determination. However, the very conditions that have to be in place for a cultural or social group to count as a nation, according to some theories (cf. Dahbour 2014; Moltchanova 2009), are present in the case of Roma arguably because of the colonial oppression that they have suffered and are still suffering today.

The understanding of nations as similar or comprised of states is common and has real-life consequences insofar as state-less and state-endowed groups currently enjoy a vastly different status: ‘[s]tate-endowed nations are full members of the international community and have control over their political futures, whereas non-state national groups do not have an internationally recognized legal right to self-determination unless they are occupied or colonized’ (Moltchanova 2009, xiii); that they are not considered nations implies that there are no legal international means for minorities’ claims to self-determination and, thus, not many means to address human rights violations. It is this aspect that makes the rights to self-determination particularly important for Roma.

According to the European ‘Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities’ that was adopted in 1994 and put in force in 39 states in 1998, Roma could be defined as national minorities and in many states – including Germany and Austria – they are. The Framework Convention is a treaty to protect the rights of persons belonging to national minorities.¹⁶ However, while the Framework Convention is a legally binding instrument under international law, it does not define (a) which people to protect as members of national minorities, (b) how to protect their rights explicitly, or (c) the States’ obligations in protecting these rights. First, the term ‘national minority’ is not defined in the Framework Convention, hence, giving states flexibility to decide for themselves who to protect under the Framework Convention; yet, it does limit this flexibility insofar as it defines free self-identification as a central element. Accordingly, individuals have the right to decide for themselves whether they wish to be identified as members of a national minority; however, any self-identification has to related to objective criteria such as religion, language, traditions, and/or cultural heritage. States that have signed the Framework Convention can take a restrictive or open approach with regard to the question of identity; states opting for the first designate a list of traditional groups that fall under the Framework Convention, states that opt for the second apply it to a broad spectrum of diverse groups.¹⁷ Both approaches can be problematic insofar as the first can simply exclude certain groups from even falling under the Framework Convention and, thus, exclude them from the protection of their rights, the second faces the problem that it shifts the burden onto the shoulders of individuals to know about the Framework Convention and to self-identify accordingly; such knowledge is not given within many Roma communities (cf. Rustem 2013) and distrust of legal instruments of the states that have for centuries used those tools against minorities, can hinder an exception of said regulations in international law.

Second, in response to (b) and (c), while the Framework Convention sets out rights that recognized members of national minorities should enjoy and the obligations of states that follow from these – such as the right to participate in cultural, social, and economic life and the corresponding obligation to promote effective equality – both rights and obligations are not clearly defined and multiple realizable, thus, giving states flexibility in how to treat and implement these rights and obligations. Importantly, a strong focus of the Framework Convention are participation rights; including the participation in the implementation of the Framework Convention itself. According to the Framework Convention, this means that members of groups that are recognized as national minorities should have the chance to participate in consultations and decisions for measures that affect them overwhelmingly. For these measures to be effective, the commentary of the Framework Convention that was adopted in 2008, recommends that individuals of national minorities have seats in parliaments and other official positions that guarantees participation.¹⁸ However, much of the implementation of the regulations stated with the Framework Conventions rely on NGOs working with or for national minorities. However, as discussed above, centuries of segregation have resulted in a situation in which both distrust of legal and political spheres and stereotypes that oppose such participation is common with regard to Roma as national minorities. Furthermore, as Robert Rustem (2013) shows, the enforcement mechanisms of the Framework Convention are too weak and there is a lack of complaint procedures, which makes it particularly difficult to implement participation successfully and to design such participation on the terms of national minorities. Hence, the Framework Convention and the status of national minorities is designed to effectively ensure participation of Roma, but it does not give them the rights to self-determination – a problem that critiques of the conflation of nationhood and statehood have taken into consideration.

Opposing such a conflation, Anna Moltchanova defines nationhood instead ‘as a political culture shared by the members of a group with the collective end of maintaining or acquiring effective agency of a certain kind’ (2009, xv), where the members of the group have to identify with the political culture and the political authority that governs them within the national group. This understanding of nation is particularly illuminating as it ‘reflects the self- and mutual understanding of the members of a national group’ (Moltchanova 2009, xvi). Understanding nationhood differently is a direct response to the problematic inequality between those with a right to self-determination and those who do not have such a right. In fact, according to Moltchanova, the right to national self-determination – where nations are now understood in terms of political cultures – goes beyond self-government but is not to be confused with statehood; hence, in her words, ‘all national groups have an equal right to self-determination provided that the realization of the right does not require the acquisition of independent statehood as its necessary condition’ (2009, xvi).¹⁹ This view has two benefits with regard to the topic at hand: First, it makes it possible to understand Roma in terms of nationhood; most Roma have an understanding of themselves and a mutual understanding of their heritage (cf. McGarry 2014) as exemplified by institutions such as the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma – even if, as is the case with invisible Roma, they are forced to hide these understandings (cf. Buzea 2022). This, in turn, makes intelligible the idea of Roma as a nation to be internally colonized subjects. Second, it highlights the ways in which even states that respect human rights (at least on paper) do not allow for the same rights to self-determination for all its citizens; a problem that is at least in part due to the colonial and white-supremacist intelligibility frameworks at work even in democratic countries. The right to self-determination is particularly relevant as a response to the complexity created by some forms of oppression against Roma; for example, the problems that come with segregation and desegregation. In fact, segregation that is the result of ongoing oppression becomes even more complex when considering strategies against segregation. The main problem being that desegregation, at this point, implies that communities are destroyed and families disappear and as such desegregation can be used as a justification for further destroying Roma communal ties – preventing them even further from resisting oppression and establishing marginalized frameworks of intelligibility.

4. (Epistemic) decolonization in the midst of Europe?

I have argued that Roma should be understood as internally colonized subjects due to the way in which their oppression in Europe mirrors some paradigm aspects of internal colonization – and especially its epistemic dimension characterized as epistemic segregation, dominant frameworks of intelligibility, and the right to be known – and that this becomes even more obvious when deflating statehood and nationhood (as, for example, proposed by Moltchanova 2009). Furthermore, understanding Roma as a national group with the right to self-determination shifts the focus from strategies of participation against oppression to strategies that are defined and molded by Roma communities themselves – including strategies such as epistemic resistance in the form of counter-narratives and resistant epistemologies that address the problematic epistemic aspects of oppression. In the following, I discuss epistemic reparations that epistemic decolonization calls for in this particular case; being guided by the specific epistemic aspects of the internal colonization of Roma in Europe that I have identified as epistemic segregation, dominant epistemic frameworks of intelligibility, and the right to be known.

So far, I have said little about decolonization. According to Olúfémi Táíwò, a basic understanding of decolonization – and one that he defends in his book – is the following: ‘Making a colony into a self-governing entity with its political and economic fortunes under its own direction (though not necessarily control)’ (Táíwò 2022, 3). This understanding, which puts more weight on the specific historic genealogy that can be seen primarily in its political and economic aspects than its symbolic aspects, is also defended by Tuck and Yang (2012). This should not be taken to imply that the epistemic aspects – both of colonization itself and the resistance against it – have no role in these understandings. However, both Táíwò and Tuck and Yang seem to caution us not to ‘domesticate decolonization’ (Tuck and Yang 2012, 3); that is, to merely include it into our already existing language of social injustice theories. In fact, merely including decolonization as another ‘metaphor’ within our social justice discourse is detrimental to actual practices of decolonization as ‘it recenters whiteness, it resettles theory, it extends innocence to the settler’, and ‘it entertains a settler future’ (Tuck and Yang 2012, 3). The reason for this can be found in the epistemic aspects of white supremacist intelligibility frameworks that ground – by rationalizing, naturalizing, and justifying – material aspects of colonization. Pre-existing discourses and frameworks, even if employed in resistance to social injustice, are nevertheless based on the intelligibility frameworks of white supremacy; frameworks geared towards appropriating ‘decolonization’ with the function of robbing it of its resistant character.

Decolonization in response to dominant frameworks of intelligibility. Having argued that Roma should be understood as internally colonized subjects within the midst of Europe raises questions of both reparation of historic oppression as well as remedies for ongoing oppression – and it seems to follow from the short discussion of decolonialization that a major focus of these should be on resisting dominant frameworks of intelligibility.²⁰ As should be obvious, the profound harms of colonialization can never be fully repaired (cf. Govier 2007, 2). It is thus helpful to think of practices of reparation and relationships of restoration as processes; these practices and relationships never fully succeed but describe ongoing struggles in which moral trust and communal togetherness are build (cf. Walker 2006). Yet, the focus on the epistemic dimension of colonialism implies that the ongoing struggle for trust will fail unless white supremacist and colonial frameworks of intelligibility are identified, critiqued and, ultimately, destroyed; their power of grounding and distorting material and social conditions is detrimental to any effort of reparation (cf. Spelman 2007, 4). Or, as Catherine Lu reminds us, part of the pervasiveness of slavery has been that those who enslave fail to imagine that things could be otherwise and – although, this claim has to be argued for with caution – even those enslaved sometimes lack the hope to imagine things differently; as is well documented in the case of the residents of Lunik IX. Here, the moral and imaginative capacities of social agents are distorted by the intelligibility frameworks of white supremacy and, thus, continue masking the ongoing oppression. As Alasia Nuti (2019) argues, historical injustices have to be repaired primarily because they are reproduced in the here and now.

Decolonization in response to epistemic segregation. In other words, one of the problems that all decolonial strategies face is the way in which oppressive forces continuously twist the narrative in their favor. But this is linked to other epistemic problems. For example, Anne Phillips (1998) argues for the politics of presence; roughly, those present and visible in public life are less likely to be ignored or ill-defined by others. This can be understood in direct relation to the epistemic segregation that Roma suffer from and that makes it difficult to epistemically resist dominant frameworks of intelligibility. However, as McGarry (2017, 152), rightly points out, with regard to Roma the situation is more complex. Resisting oppression by being visible in public life, first, implies having the option to be visible and, second, ignores that some might have justified reasons to distrust social and political institutions in which such a visibility could be achieved. Furthermore, on the grounds of prevalent prejudices against Roma, social and political institutions turn the very rational distrust of Romani communities in a political system that has and continues to oppress them into shameful inactive political participation stemming solely from a social pathology of Roma and, so the claim goes, their unwillingness to integrate.

Many of these resistant and decolonial epistemic strategies could be nourished under conditions of nationhood, as defined by Moltchanova. Taking seriously this understanding of nationhood implies that Roma should be allowed to determine their future political status. This is an extremely powerful proposal. For example, as we have seen above, forced exclusion has resulted in vast segregation of Roma communities. However, a mere attempt to desegregation is often used as a means to destroy communities. Such complexities are best navigated from within the communities affected the most, being grounded in the particular knowledge that these communities provide counter to dominant frameworks of intelligibility. Understanding Roma as nations with the right to self-determination makes it possible for these communities to take control over their futures without being dependent on the recognition of their participation by their oppressors (as it is, for example, currently the case within the Framework Convention) or within dominant frameworks of intelligibility that re-author the identity of Roma. Let me illustrate with an example: The Roma-majority municipality Šuto Orizari in Macedonia faces dire conditions of poverty because its political representatives are not in control of their own budgets or policies. When Šuto Orizari was designed as a segregated place for Skopje’s Roma residents it deliberately trapped its residents in poverty, resulting in a currently weak tax basis, which in turn means that Šuto Orizari is dependent on external funds from outside that are primarily controlled by authorities without any or few Romani representatives (cf. McGarry 2017, 149–150).²¹

Furthermore, the right to self-determination also allows for coming to terms with one’s identity and developing projects according to it. This includes the right to be known. So far, I have shown that dominant frameworks of intelligibility re-author Romani identity according to pervasive stereotypes of criminality that are detrimental to epistemic inclusion. Jennifer Lackey has recently argued for another dimension of being known as being ‘important at both the intrapersonal and interpersonal level’ (2022, 56). The idea is that it is not enough to bear witness to an injustice and to know about the harm perpetrated, but that it is important to know the person harmed – not as another victim or survivor, but as the person they were. It is for this reason, Lackey states, that we ask ‘Say Their Names’ in response to the many Black Americans who are violated and killed at the hands of police officers. Being known is an interpersonal matter; one person is known to another person. It is at the heart of both recognition theory – the idea that we can only develop a positive relation to self if we live in conditions of mutual recognition with others – and at many writings by Black scholars; Du Bois (1903, 3) writes about the double-consciousness and the feeling of looking at oneself through the eyes of another, Fanon recounts the way in which he adopted an image of himself as created by whites, and Charles Mills is concerned with ‘the fundamental asymmetry between typical white views of blacks and typical black views of whites’ (2007, 17) where the relation of power and oppression produces misrepresentation. Being known in this sense is a crucial part for who we are and what we can do and is, thus, also intrapersonal. This holds both for persons as individuals as well as for persons as part of communities – a fact that is highlighted both by Moltchanova’s and Dahbour’s proposal.

I conclude that decolonizing strategies that take seriously the specific epistemic aspects of epistemic segregation, dominant frameworks of intelligibility, and the dismissal of the right to be known – as are central to understanding Roma as internally colonial subjects in the midst of Europe – can be helped with a right to self-determination. This recognizes the fact that since the beginning of colonialism, colonial subjects had to concentrate energies on adapting and resisting impositions of its colonizers; both in a deconstructive manner by identifying Eurocentric residua in collective life and unmasking its justificatory powers and in a reconstructive manner by enacting resistant epistemic practices owned by colonial subjects (cf. Banuri 1990; Serequebeman 1991).

Acknowledgements

I'm grateful to the participants of an online conference on the decolonization of epistemic injustice, organized by Kerstin Reibold, Fabian Schuppert and myself, and of a conference on the same topic at the Arctic University of Norway (UiT), organized by Kerstin Reibold and Melina Duarte, for their helpful comments and insightful discussion. I'm also indebted to the participants of ROGAP, who have significantly helped in shaping this paper; special thank you to Sally Haslanger and Jennifer Saul for inviting me and chairing the session as well as (in no particular order) Samia Hesni, ... Finally, I'm very grateful to Anna Moltchanova for her theoretical input and to Kerstin Reibold and Fabian Schuppert for a project that has started during Covid and has finally resulted in this incredible special issue.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This paper will not use the G*word for its derogatory meaning; with the exception of direct quotes. Furthermore, this paper will adhere to the English-speaking convention of using ‘Roma’ (or singular ‘Rom’, which literally translates to ‘human being’) as an umbrella term referring to either Roma or both Sinti and Roma (as well as other groups that self-identify as belonging under that term, such as Kale, Romanichels, Dom, and many others); the only exception can be found in the discussion of the particular history of institutionalized oppression of Sinti and Roma within Germany, since Sinti are the majority in Germany, in contrast to the situation in many other European countries where Roma are either the majority or, as is the case in some Eastern European countries, the only group. For details, see the explication of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma (Zentralrat der Deutschen Sinti und Roma): https://zentralrat.sintiundroma.de/sinti-und-roma-zigeuner/; last accessed February 16, 2024.

2 This numbers have to be used with caution as they are far from contested and raise worries about the way in which state agencies categorize and count citizens and residents. The numbers used here are from the following source: https://www.bpb.de/themen/europa/sinti-und-roma-in-europa/; last accessed February 16, 2024.

3 I am not going to argue for (or against) the claim that the oppression faced by Roma is accurately described as racism; instead, for the purpose of this paper, I assume that racism is one form of oppression and Roma are oppressed. See McGarry (2017) for arguments on racism and Roma, see Cudd (2006) for an overview of oppression. I will refer to antigypsyism as a form of oppression that focuses on the problematic image of the G*. According to some scholars (cf. Tittel 2023), antigypsyism and racism are different insofar as racism concentrates on race as the defining notion for the problematic idea that some races are superior to others, antigypsyism, on the other hand, does not consider race, but the construction of a specific group united by the characterization of G*.

4 Here, it might be especially interesting to consider Roma as occupying a dual position: They are being part of Europe and, thus, the project of (external) colonization while, simultaneously, suffering from oppressive practices within Europe that are similar to or are themselves – so I will argue – colonial practices. Questions to consider would focus on the role that Roma played in the project of colonialism and/or whether they are perceived to be a part of the ‘white elite’ in specific contexts? While the contradictions that might be uncovered when investigating these questions are philosophically interesting, due to space and time, this paper will not consider them. Instead, I will focus on Roma as oppressed subjects within Europe. I am deeply thankful to one of the external reviewers for raising such interesting and challenging questions.

5 With the exception of direct quotes from historical documents, I will not use this word for its derogatory meaning – even if it is appropriated by some Roma today. See also footnote 1.

6 The genocide is termed Porrajmos (translation: the devoured) in Romanes.

7 The inability to adequately communicate one’s experiences due to distorted hermeneutical resources has been analyzed by Fricker (2007) under the notion of hermeneutical injustice; Fricker’s focus, however, is on the inability to understand one’s own significant experiences due to a gap in the collective hermeneutical resources that is the result of the hermeneutical marginalization of oppression social groups. However, in this paper, my focus is primarily on the epistemic aspects of institutionalized oppression and the inability of those oppressed to communicate their experiences adequately, using existing yet marginalized hermeneutical resources, to those oppressing due to epistemologies of ignorance and dominant frameworks of intelligibility; this focus is particular well analyzed by decolonial epistemologists such as Dotson (2011 und 2014) and Ruíz and Sertler (2024) and I will concentrate on their work in what follows.

8 Sinti often being invisible in Germany, and Roma visible.

9 Romaphobia, according to McGarry (2017), is a driving force for policies of eviction and segregation; in fact, interventions by state authorities of the form described here are only possible due to prevalent narratives of who belongs to a state and who does not (cf. Newman and Paasi 1998, 195) – a well-known distinction between ‘them and us’ in decolonial theory. See, for example, the statements given by Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan in 2005, where he describes the removal of the Roma residents from the Sulukule neighborhood in Istanbul as ‘cleaning away the monstrosity’ (Karaman and Islam 2012, 236) or the declaration given by then French Interior Minister Manuel Valls in 2013 that ‘those people [Roma migrants] have lifestyles that are extremely different from ours’ and ‘[f]or this reason, they should return to Bulgaria or Romania’ (Amnesty International 2014, 15); a view supported by 77 percent of French citizens that see Roma not as part of French society.

10 See Wippermann (2015, 15) for an account of the stigmatization of Roma in other European countries. See Meuser (2014) and Giere (1996) for a full account of the social construction of G* as criminals. Interestingly, Giere (1996) takes those prejudices to be linked to the identity constructed by oppressors as G* – and thus as Antigypsyism – but not linked to Romani identity. The examples considered here indicate, however, that Romani identity itself can be problematically constructed in specific ways that are related to criminalization – even in contexts in which the derogatory term G* has no longer a hold on people. For that reason, one could draw a distinction between Romaphobia or Anti-Romani sentiment and antigypsyism.

11 Bierria (2014) uses the notion of ‘social authoring’ to describe intentions that are re-scripted into something that the holder of the intention did not in fact intend such that these could be in line with the dominant intelligibility framework according to which Black people in the US are linked to criminality. I am here using the idea of social authoring in a similar vein but in respect to the identity of those re-scripted.

12 See also Mitova (2020) and Mungwini (2019) for recent writing on epistemic decolonization.

13 See Haslanger (2023) for a distinction between systemic and structural injustice.

14 Under conditions of oppression and colonialism, such structures are often hard to identify. As theorists, we might be tempted to ignore or fail to see the ways in which even seemingly individual choices are in fact embedded in a so-called choice architecture – describing the causal links between our choices and the social structures influencing such choices – that differs significantly from person to person; mostly depending on their material circumstances, their social positions, and/or their identities in relation to the dominant frame of intelligibility. Two common examples of this are Cudd’s discussion of Lisa’s decision to stay at home with her child under conditions of patriarchy (2006; 148–151 and 239–240) and Young’s discussion of Sandy, a single mother trapped in an unjust urban infrastructural setting (2003); however, note, that Young’s example is designed to illustrate the distinction between structural injustice and interpersonal discrimination.

15 See Chang and Rucker-Chang (2020) for an insightful comparison between the situation of Roma in Europe and Civil Rights in the US.

16 For a comprehensive overview, see: https://www.coe.int/en/web/minorities/at-a-glance#{%2279030665%22:[1]}; last accessed February 24, 2024. The Framework Convention focuses in particular on the protection of language, education, and participation rights.

17 See https://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/cets-number-/-abridged-title-known?module=treaty-detail&treatynum=157 for the full text of the Framework Convention and https://rm.coe.int/CoERMPublicCommonSearchServices/DisplayDCTMContent?documentId=09000016806a4811 for the fourth commentary that focuses on the scope of application of the Framework Convention (adopted in 2016).

18 See https://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/cets-number-/-abridged-title-known?module=treaty-detail&treatynum=157 for the full text of the Framework Convention and rm.coe.int/CoERMPublicCommonSearchServices/DisplayDCTMContent?documentId=09000016800bc7e8 for the second Commentary concerned with effective participation.

19 Interestingly, Omar Dahbour argues against the conflation of nationalism and patriotism with a similar motivation; here, the idea is that ‘[p]eoples are ethical communities, but nations are not’ (2014, 91). Ethical communities, according to Dahbour, are characterized by ties of solidarity – patriotism –, which fulfill the function to find and maintain social institutions that are necessary for any form of collective life. In fact, Dahbour claims that it is because of this that politics are irreducibly ethical and cannot be realized in a nation-state (cf. 2014, 112) – not to be confused with nationhood, according to Moltchanova. While Dahbour argues for peoples to play a significant part in arguments for self-determination and characterizes peoples as being residents in particular places, his ideas nevertheless resonate with what I have argued for above. In fact, even though Roma are scattered all over Europe, we can see the same ties of solidarity that Dahbour describes.

20 See Olúfémi O. Táíwò for a skilled analysis of how ‘slavery and colonialism built the world we know’ (2022, 18). This section does not attempt to provide a full or conclusive overview of the debate of reparations; see, for example, Lu (2017, chapter 7) for such an attempt. Instead, I focus on some elements from the debate that are particularly important in the case of Roma in Europe.

21 As became apparent so far, there is a tight relation between epistemic practices and economic and material conditions. While such a relation is here taking for granted in a very obvious way – the way in which being economically and materially deprived almost always results in epistemic segregation – and a less obvious way – the way in which dominant frameworks of intelligibility result in economic and material deprivation. Yet, there are other questions that deserve a more detailed look, such as how economic inequality systematically impacts the recognition and epistemic status of Roma within societies? Or in what ways material conditions influence the ability of Roma to exercise their right to self-determination? Unfortunately, for lack of space, I cannot consider these questions here. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for raising these important questions.