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Journal of Rural Studies 28 (2012) 81e88

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Journal of Rural Studies

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Continuity or rupture? Roma/Gypsy communities in rural and urbanenvironments under post-socialism

Michal Ruzicka a,b,*

a IK “Empowerment Through Human Rights”, Universität Wien, Hörlgasse 6, A-1090 Vienna, AustriabDepartment of Sociology, University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Avalon, Pod�ebradova 1, 30614 Plze�n, Czech Republic

Keywords:Post-socialismSocial exclusionMarginalisationRoma/GypsiesCzech RepublicSlovakia

* IK “Empowerment Through Human Rights”, Univ1090 Vienna, Austria. Tel.: þ43 69919168091, þ1427727429.

E-mail addresses: mruzicka@kss.zcu.cz, michal.ruz1 The Roma, often referred to as “Gypsies” by th

Europe’s largest non-territorial ethnic minority. Kalthere were about 8e15 million Roma living in the wapproximately 5e6 million were allegedly residing ithe population of Roma/Gypsies in the Czech RepubliSlovakia at 400,000e450,000 (Liégeois, 2007: p. 31).

0743-0167/$ e see front matter � 2012 Elsevier Ltd.doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2012.01.019

a b s t r a c t

The aim of the article is to contribute to existing research and debates on social change associated withthe post-socialist transformation in Eastern and Central Europe. It does so by drawing attention to andexamining the diversity of ways in which such change has been lived through and reflected upon bymembers of Roma (Gypsy) communities living in urban and rural environments. Drawing on ethno-graphic research amongst excluded and segregated Roma in the ‘ghettos’ of Czech cities and in rural‘Gypsy settlements’ in the Slovak countryside, the author notes a striking difference between howmembers of these communities, belonging to the same extended families, lived through and reflect uponthe post-socialist transformation. While the members of the Roma communities living in Czech citiesperceive the post-socialist transformation as one of the most dramatic ruptures in their life trajectories,the rural Roma do not seem to have been affected as deeply and dramatically, and their life trajectoriesseem to be framed by different events than those directly associated with the market transition. Thepaper analyses and explains the social and historical conditions that (co)produce the sense of rupture orcontinuity in the life trajectories of members of Roma communities exposed to urban and ruralenvironments.

� 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Recent academic research and human rights monitors haverepeatedly identified a significant decline in the socio-economicstatus of Eastern European Roma/Gypsies, marked by deepeningpoverty and increasing levels of residential segregation (e.g. Barany,2002; Hirt and Jakoubek, 2006; Ladányi, 2001; Ladányi andSzelényi, 2006; Revenga et al., 2002; Ringold, 2000; Sirovátka,2006a; Stewart, 2002; Va�se�cka et al., 2003).1 Scholars of post-socialist transformation have shown that the more living condi-tions deteriorated in a society as a whole, the more they deterio-rated for Roma communities in particular, who, out of all socialcategories, were the hardest hit by themarket transition (Sirovátka,

ersität Wien, Hörlgasse 6, A-420 605238226; fax: þ43

icka@univie.ac.at.e surrounding societies, areibová (1993) estimated thatorld in the 1990s, of which

n Europe. Liégeois estimatedc at 200,000e250,000 and in

All rights reserved.

2006b: p. 115). In other words, during the post-socialist trans-formation, Roma became a “symbol of poverty and [economic]backwardness” (Radi�cová and Va�se�cka, 2001: p. 179). For example,a 1997 household survey in Bulgaria revealed that over 84% of Romahouseholds were living below the poverty line (Ringold, 2000:p. 1).2 In response to existing data, “Roma issues” have becomea focus for both international policy and action (Romadecade, 2009)and awareness-raising campaigns by the non-governmentalhuman rights sector (D�zeno, 2006; ERRC, 2010; FRA, 2009;Halász, 2007). This shift in the orientation of official policy, occur-ring in the context of a long history of exclusion and margin-alisation, often directly facilitated by the state apparatus, can beviewed as a positive step towards greater justice in the system ofrelations between the state and its ‘others’. However this leadsexisting academic and policy-oriented research on the marginalityof Roma communities in East-Central Europe to represent thepredicament of these communities in terms of a homogenousexperience of decline in their social and economic standing.

2 Based upon my own ethnographic data, I estimate the level of unemploymentin poor segregated Roma communities in Slovakia and Czech Republic to be as highas 90% and in some places even 100%. Sirovátka (2006b: p. 115e116) gives a slightlylower estimate of Roma unemployment at about 80% (Sirovátka, 2006b: p. 116).

M. Ruzicka / Journal of Rural Studies 28 (2012) 81e8882

This article, which aims to complicate this kind of uniformvision by studying the diversity of experiences of Roma commu-nities under post-socialism, is based on ethnographic researchconducted with excluded Roma communities in both urban andrural environments in the former Czechoslovakia. The goal of theresearch was to understand and analyse how the post-socialisttransformation altered the lives of members of local Romacommunities after 1989. Over the course of my research I came torealize that members of Roma communities had much morevariegated and diverse experiences than I had originally expectedand more multi-faceted than existing research would suggest. As Iexplored the life trajectories of my informants in urban and ruralenvironments, I realized that these trajectories (as well as myinformants’ reflections on the post-socialist transformation)differed in some quite significant ways even when these peoplebelonged to the same extended families. Generally, members ofsocio-spatially excluded Roma communities living in “Gypsysettlements” in rural parts of Slovakia do not seem to have beenaffected as deeply, and do not seem to have experienced the darksides of the post-socialist transformation as dramatically, as theirurban counterparts.

Analyses of social and geographical phenomena can perhapstoo easily fall into culturally pre-constructed “categories ofseemingly distinctive opposition”, such as the urban/ruraldichotomy (Cloke and Johnston, 2005: p. 5). By referring to urbanand rural in this article, it is not my intention to contribute toreification of these already contested categories of vision anddivision (e.g. Halfacree, 2004; McLaughlin, 1986), but rather tounderscore the diversity of living conditions (in terms of housingconditions, policy and politicaleeconomic contexts, etc.) to whichparticular Roma communities have been exposed and which mayhave shaped their life chances and trajectories in quite differentways. This is not to deny that categories like “rural” and “urban”are concepts embedded in particular socio-histories, but to high-light a different problem: by glossing over the difference betweenliving conditions of different Roma communities, we run the riskof failing to adequately address their perhaps different problemsand needs.3

The main objective of this article is to present and explain thesubstantial differences in how the post-socialist transformation hasaffected (and has been reflected upon by members of) Romacommunities living in urban and rural environments. This isintended to add a new perspective to existing debates and toprovide a better understanding of the diversity of processes anddynamics and the ways in which these were experienced duringthe post-socialist transformation. The article begins by introducingthe researchmethods and settings. Thereafter, through a discussionof the ethnographic data, I seek to answer following researchquestions: (1) Why do the excluded Roma in rural and urban envi-ronments have such different perceptions of the post-socialist trans-formation? and, more specifically, (2) How are these divergingperceptions and biographical accounts linked to their different socialand economic environments?

4 On the rise of multi-sited ethnography see (Falzon, 2009).5 For long-term research strategy based on focused “revisits”, when the

researcher returns to the site of her/his previous study, see (Burawoy, 2003).6 The term gadje is a non-offensive term in Romanes (i.e. in the dialects spoken

2. Research methods

This article rests on data gathered during ethnographic researchon the circumstances and dynamics of social life under theconditions of social exclusion. Since 2002 I have been conducting

3 See also Schwarcz (2012) and Kovacs (2012) in this volume, for a discussion ofthe ways in which localized constructions of Roma identity, as well as local stateand community practices regarding welfare and social assistance can impact on theparticular experiences and issues faced by Roma people.

iterative ethnographic research (O’Reilly, 2005; Spradley, 1980)among Roma communities in rural Slovakia and in the cities of theCzech Republic. Generally, the goal of my research has been toexplore the social logics of life under the conditions of socio-spatialexclusion, economic marginalisation, and symbolic disdain. I havebeen conducting ethnographic research in two Gypsy settlementsin eastern Slovakia since 2002, and, since 2004 I have extended theresearch to include Roma social networks in Czech urban“ghettos”.4

During my ethnographic research, consisting of systematicrevisits over the course of a decade,5 I would usually spendseveral weeks in the settlements each year, in both summer andwinter. During my visits, I usually used the method of direct(sometimes also participant) observation, and semi-structuredand unstructured, mostly informal, interviews. By 2011 I hadspent more than 80 days conducting ethnographic research withurban Roma communities in Czech cities (the municipalities ofKladno, Rotava, Brno and Pilsen). In addition, I spent over 80 daysconducting ethnographic research in two Gypsy settlements inthe Slovak countryside between 2002 and 2010. Between April2011 and September 2011 I spent another 6 months conductingethnographic and archival research on Gypsy settlements in themunicipalities of Poprad and Levo�ca in eastern Slovakia. The mainbody of data for this article consists of ethnographic materials(field notes and observations), archival materials (produced by thestate apparatuses in the last hundred years), and audioevisualmaterials (recent and historical photographs, recorded inter-views with members of Roma communities, with the gadje6

villagers, as well as with representatives of local bureaucraticstructures).

3. Research settings

One of the Gypsy settlements in which I conducted my field-work is situated in the Spi�s region (germ. Zips) in eastern Slovakia,and is one of the most deprived and excluded settlements in Slo-vakia.7 It lies outside of the cadaster limits of the nearest village,which is used as an excuse for not investing any public resources toimprove the living conditions of the settlement’s inhabitants. Thesettlement is thus infrastructurally excluded (Ruzicka, 2011) fromtheworld around it, with no access to forms of public infrastructureand resources otherwise generally available, such as paved roads,public transport, clean drinking water, and electricity. The inhabi-tants of the settlement have been exposed to multiple forms ofexclusion for centuries. Excluded from the public sphere by havinglimited or no access to public institutions such as churches or a localpub, their children have had to attend racially segregated classes atlocal schools, etc. In order to watch television or listen to the radio,they have to run their appliances on car batteries, and they drawwater for cooking and drinking from a nearby creek. Although allGypsy settlements can be seen as more or less “excluded” from fullparticipation in wider society and the economy, this particularsettlement has been a rather extreme case of social, spatial andinfrastructural exclusion.

by some Roma/Gypsy groups in East-Central Europe) that refers to non-Romapeople.

7 Although I conducted my fieldwork in two Gypsy settlements and brieflyvisited at least a dozen others, I have decided to limit the focus of this article to theparticular settlement in which I gathered most of the data on “memories” of post-socialism.

8 Note: the following text is an abridged version of Josef’s narrative. I informallyinterviewed Josef on several occasions on this particular topic between 2008 and2010. The following narrative is based on edited field notes taken during theinterviews, as the interviews were not recorded on tape.

9 The abbreviation “3 þ 1” was used in Czechoslovakia to denote a flat consistingof three separate rooms plus a kitchen.10 When referring to “paying”, Josef meant paying rent and the costs for servicesconnected with housing, such as electricity, water and gas. Default on rent has inrecent years become one of the reasons most frequently used by both the state andbusiness entrepreneurs for evicting (displacing) poor Roma families from theirplace of residence.11 9500 CZK (Czech crowns) was equal to 380 V in 2010, when the currencyexchange rate was around 1:25.

M. Ruzicka / Journal of Rural Studies 28 (2012) 81e88 83

Besides conducting research among rural Roma communities, Ihave also done ethnographic research among their relatives livingin an urban environment in the Czech Republic. The specific socio-historical development of Czechoslovakia in the 20th century, upuntil its division into two separate states in 1993, gave rise toa system of transnational kinship networks among Roma commu-nities: these networks connect members of extended Roma fami-lies dispersed between rural Gypsy settlements in Slovakia andCzech cities. One of the tragedies of the SecondWorld War was thenear extermination of Roma in the Czech lands, where only severalhundred survived (Crowe, 2007: p. 48e50). The Roma in Slovakiawere more fortunate in avoiding the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust,and by the end of the SecondWorld War there were about 100,000Roma still living in Slovakia (Crowe, 2007: p. 48). Soon after thewar,these people started migrating to the Czech provinces, mainly tothe industrial centres in the northern parts of the country and tolarge cities such as Prague, Brno, Ostrava, and Pilsen (Davidová,1970: p. 40e41), while parts of their families remained in Slova-kia. This “transnationalization” of Czechoslovak Roma familiescontinued throughout the 1960s and 1970s, as I will explain in thearticle later. It is among these networks that I have been conductingmy fieldwork. The particular socio-historical and material contextsof these settlements and networks may well have had a profoundeffect on the nature of the data that I was able to collect frominterviews.

Other research has suggested that Gypsy settlements in Slo-vakia may not be as isolated from the dominant society as mydata suggest because, for example, some Roma have successfullyadopted transnational work migration as a way of “escaping thesocio-economic crisis and feelings of loss and decline” (Grill,2011: p. 82). Although I am aware that such cases of successfulflight do indeed exist, the Roma who took part in my research donot often travel for work, and if they do they tend to remainwithin their kin-based social networks stretching between Gypsysettlements in Slovakia and ghetto-like locations in Czech cities.However comparatively rare this particular Gypsy settlementmay be, there is nonetheless a methodological value to analysingunique, unusual, or even “extreme” cases in that they revealthings that may remain hidden or unarticulated in more“common” cases.

By examining a particular case of a rural Roma communitywhose experience of the post-socialist transformation has been lessdramatic than of their urban relatives, it is not my intention togeneralise the experiences of all urban and all rural Romacommunities. I am well aware that other authors have observed“growing social differentiation between Roma and non-Roma, aswell as between Roma themselves” (Grill, 2011: p. 80), or even the“ongoing collapse of... [a local Roma] community” in Gypsy settle-ments in Slovakia (Scheffel, 2005: p. 204). Rather than attemptingto make generalisations of this sort, the aim of this article is tounderstand why (and by what mechanisms) the position of someRoma communities changed (or deteriorated) more than that ofother Roma communities.

4. The post-socialist transformation as reflected upon byRoma families

Up until a certain point in my research I thought that the generalexperience of a poor Roma family would be structurally similar tothe case described below, which I find to represent a rather“typical” case in that it depicts a life trajectory quite similar to otherexcluded Roma families in Czech cities that I have been able toobserve and/or interview. Once every few months I would visita Roma family whose relatives (sisters, brothers and cousins) Iknew quite well from one of the Gypsy settlements in Slovakia. The

couple that forms the centre of this family moved from Slovakia toPilsen with their respective parents in the late 1960s, when theywere targeted by a government project aimed at abolishing Gypsysettlements (see Section 5 below). They occasionally visited or werevisited by their relatives who remained in Slovakia. In 2008 Josef,by then in his mid-fifties and a father of three, told me whathappened when the “communist times” ended8

We had been living normally for more than 10 years in a prefab,‘3 þ 1’,9 and we had lived in a prefab before under the communists.We never had any problems with ‘paying’.10 We have a disabledson, who my wife takes care of e she receives her unemploymentbenefits, plus she gets the welfare benefits for our son. The wholeproblem started when our son reached 18. Then they (i.e. the statee M.R.) cut off all the benefits, as our son started to be eligible forhis own disability pension of about the same amount. But it tookabout a whole year before everything was set up and they startedto send the benefits to our son again. But we still had to pay rent ofabout 9500, and so our debt rose to about 100,000 within just thatone year.11 We had nothing to pay the rent with. It all went to courtand the judicial decision was ‘eviction without any substitutehousing’. Fortunately we had a lawyer, so in the end they moved ushere.

Josef told me his family’s story in 2008, at which point he andhis family were living in a municipally owned “tenement for rent-defaulters”, i.e. a house reserved by the local authority to accom-modate people who had problems paying rent on time or in full intheir previous place of residence. The rent in this house was lowerthan in their previous accommodation, but the family werealready in arrears, and they had other debts as well (they owed themunicipal transit company multiple fines for riding public trans-port without a valid ticket, and they also owed money to a high-interest loan provider). Their “inability” to pay their rent per-sisted and within a few years the family was evicted again, thistime “without any substitute” (their son was in institutional careby that time). After living with relatives for a while in an over-crowded flat in the same city, Josef found interim accommodationfor his family at a shelter run by a charity. After a few months ofagain not being able to pay the rent, the family “vanished”: I havebeen unable to re-establish contact with them since the summer of2010.

That same year I was taken aback by the rather less “typical”narrative of two people, who were actually relatives of Josef, theauthor of the preceding narrative. These two people werea woman and a manwho were living in an old dwelling unit on thefringes of a gadje village in Eastern Slovakia (this building wasoccupied by several Roma families and was recognised in thevillage as the “second settlement”, the first settlement beinglocated about 2 km away from the village). The woman and manwere both close relatives of the Roma living in the first settlement,and the woman herself was actually born and raised in thatsettlement. Both in their late 50s or early 60s, they talked with me

M. Ruzicka / Journal of Rural Studies 28 (2012) 81e8884

about a few photographs that I had found in the local archive. Thephotographs were taken back in 1965 in their particular Gypsysettlement.12 The woman was one of the persons in the photo-graph, around 15 years of age at the time (the man was a bityounger, but he contributed his own experience from the late1960s and 1970s to the discussion). I used this opportunity, whenthe woman was pleased by this rare photograph, to ask for detailsabout their lives at that time.

M.R.: “And tell me: what was it like to live in those days?”

Woman: “We led a hard life...”

M.R.: “What was it like then? What was life like?

Woman: “Poor. We had nothing to eat.”

M.R.: “How come?”

Woman: “We had nothing to eat. We ate only once a day. Bakedpotatoes... or... pancakes... made only of flour. We didn’t havemuch...”

...

Man: “Nowadays we have full freezers of meat, and we cook andeat meat every day.”

M.R.: “And in former times e didn’t you have jobs?”

Man: “No. there never were any... If we didn’t go and ask aroundthe villages, we didn’t have anything to eat. Not even the old e

not even mothers! Nothing...”

...

M.R.: “Do you think it is better these times or before?”

Man: “Well... It is better nowadays... then life was harder...”

Woman [interrupting the man]: “We would go to the woodsbarefoot, we had no shoes! We had only some slippers.”

...

M.R.: “And tell me: what has changed since the end ofcommunism...”

Woman: “Well, the communists... Well... it is better nowadays.We have shoes” [laughing]...

M.R.: “Why is it better nowadays?”

Woman: “At least we have something to eat. Even though thereis no work, we have something to eat...”

One surprise from interviews like this one was the level ofpoverty in which rural Roma lived under state-socialism, in themiddle of state-socialist society with its alleged 100% employment.The above narrative has been corroborated by the local villagechronicle, written in 196213:

12 I discovered these photographs almost by accident when researching the localarchive for materials on the history of Gypsy settlements in the municipality. Thephotographs were taken in 1965 by an unknown photographer who was doc-umenting the shape of buildings occupied by Roma families, as the municipalitywas preparing for the implement of the government project of “liquidation ofGypsy settlements”, which would start the following year. The photographs mainlyrecord the buildings occupied by Roma in the municipality, but sometimes theoccupants themselves were captured in the pictures.13 Legislation introduced in the 1920s and 1950s required the municipalities tomaintain chronicles of important events in the local community. Only rarely didthese chronicles include references to local Roma communities, and if they did, thereferences always reflected the unequal power relations between the Roma and thegadje communities by depicting the Roma as morally and culturally inferior to thelocal gadje population.

Our Gypsies, they still live by their ownmeans... They don’t haveanything to eat, nothing to burn in their stoves, and they don’tlive well. Why? Because they booze away all their money! Theydon’t work, and if they do at all, then only during the summer.They have lots of children e there are pensioners who live offchild allowances.

Besides being a record of historical “facts” (however embeddedin the subjective experience of the author), the above quotationfrom the village chronicle can be understood as a manifestation ofthe conflict between the local and the national (official) versions ofhistory (Haukanes, 2004). While the official rhetoric was “totransform [the Roma] into productive, cooperative, and supportivesocialist citizens” (Barany, 2002: p. 114), the local chronicle por-trayed the local Roma as suffering from poverty and refusing toaccept the norms of the dominant society.

Another surprise for me was that the Roma in the above inter-view claimed that their living conditions had actually improvedwith the demise of state-socialism,which seems to rather contradictcommon sense. The data I was collecting duringmy research slowlystarted to make me question previous notions I had held about theeffects of post-socialist transformations on the lives of people inexcluded Roma communities. Prior to collecting interviews such asthis, I had accepted what most research in this field had beenclaiming: that the post-socialist transformation caused a dramaticslump in the socio-economic status of Roma communities in theCentral and East-European region en masse, thus upholding theclaim that “the Roma... are among the major victims of the trans-formation process from the command to the market economy”(D�zambazovi�c and Jurásková, 2003: p. 326). Initial findings frommyown ethnographic research had corroborated such a perspective,probably because the data I thought I was “collecting” were in fact“produced” by that very perspective (Ruzicka, 2006; Ruzicka andRadostný, 2006). I was forced by my informants to adopt episte-mological reflexivity (Bourdieu, 1992; Bourdieu et al., 1968/1991) asan active ingredient not just in ex-post data analysis andwriting butalso inmyfieldwork. It was at this point in the research that I startedto play with the idea that my previous understandings of the post-socialist transformation appliedmore to urban settings and that lifein rural areas might have followed a somewhat different path.

4.1. Rural memories

The attention devoted to issues like memory, commemorationand nostalgia in the fields of anthropology, cultural studies, historyand other disciplines can be interpreted as a response to theoutcomes of the post-socialist transformation, during whichpolitical dimensions of these issues became particularly apparentand often played an active role in the processes of social change(Czepczy�nski, 2008; Pasieka, 2012; Pine et al., 2004; Watson, 1994).I identified the problem that is to be scrutinised in this article whenI realized that memories of post-socialism varied greatly in relationto the locations (“urban” vs. “rural”) in which they were recountedand from which they had emerged.

The urban Roma with whom I conducted interviews tended tostress the collapse of state-socialism as one of the pivotalmoments intheir life-histories, after which, “you know, everything changed”e asone of my informants commented in the summer of 2010. It couldgenerally be said that most of my Roma informants in Czech cities ewho are nowadays unemployed, under-educated, often havingalready experienced a forced eviction e lived quite different livesbefore and after the collapse of the state-socialist system. Most ofthese people lost their jobs in early 1990s, as did Josef. Being hit hardby deindustrialization and by the effects of the privatization of state-owned companies via restructuring of production and laying off of

15 Scheffel estimated that for his informants living in a Gypsy settlement, the

M. Ruzicka / Journal of Rural Studies 28 (2012) 81e88 85

surplus labourpower,my informants very soon “becameuseless fromthe perspective of the emerging economic system” (Ladányi, 2001: p.71). Very often, after losing their jobs as unqualified workers in stateenterprises the Roma were not able to find another stable job. Theirpersonal experience confirms the findings of research on Roma/Gypsymarginality fromother transitional societies inEasternEurope,which usually point to a massive slump in their socio-economicstatus (e.g. Emigh et al., 2001; Ladányi and Szelényi, 2006).

The excluded Roma living in rural Gypsy settlements in theeastern parts of Slovakia do not seem to have been affected by thepost-socialist transformation to the same extent as were theirrelatives in Czech cities. During the interviews they almost alwaysmentioned that “all of us lost our jobs” (before 1989 they hadworked on the local collective farm, which went out of business inthe early 1990s), but as our interviews continued and went“deeper” into details and particular contexts it seemed to me thatthese people had been hit much harder by certain events in theyears following 1990s. The biographies of informants who lived ina rural context during the post-socialist transformation seemed tobe framed by different milestones than the structural changesgenerally identified as part of the post-socialist transformation.Among my rural informants it was as if the post-socialist trans-formation was “absent” from their life trajectories. When they toldme about important events in their past lives (varying, of course,according to age, gender and individual life-histories) that focusedon things like: World War II, or the two years spent in mandatorymilitary service (for which young men from Slovakia used to besent to barracks in the Czech cities). Among the more recent eventsthat seemed to affect my informants’ lives was Slovakia’s entry intothe Schengen area in late 2007 e this moment opened up neweconomic opportunities for relatively unrestricted migration to theCzech Republic. The most dramatic changes affecting the lives ofmy informants in Gypsy settlements in Slovakia, however seem tohave been (1) the welfare reform introduced in 2004, bringingsevere cutbacks to state welfare, especially for the poorest, and (2)the entry of Slovakia into the Eurozone in early 2009 and the sideeffects of that step, such as slight price increases on ordinary goods,a change that impacted especially hard on those with low income.

When I realized that the post-socialist transformation may nothave played as “important” a role in the lives of rural Roma as itdefinitely had for their urban counterparts, I also realized that thisparticular moment had often been reflected upon by thesurrounding gadje population. When asked “what changed duringthe post-socialist transformation for the Gypsies”, the gadje wouldimpute a “moral” dimension to the question and immediately usecondemning language (see also Schwarcz, 2012). A former mayorcombined this moral reproach, which prevails in the local discourseon Gypsies with reflections on post-socialist institutional changes,specifically, the transformation of the welfare state.

M.R.: “What do you think has changed the most in the past 20years for the Gypsies? I mean when Communism ended...”

Former mayor: “... [following our previous discussion] then theRevolution came. And among the Gypsies it was not that fast eyou know? e that they actually felt the changes. Not them. Ittook them a while.”

M.R.: “Hmmm...”

Former mayor: “The main problem was that they were gettingmoney in exchange for nothing... they simply abused14 the

14 Public and political discourse in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia “trans-lates” phenomena in any way connected with the Roma into moral problems.Dependence on the welfare state is thus translated into “abuse” of the welfare state.

money and were living like a pig in shit. At that time they weregetting enormous money for nothing, and they all becameunemployed... they didn’t have to work, because they wereentitled to fat welfare benefits.”

The former mayor’s belief that in the past (meaning between1989 and 2004) the Roma had been obtaining (undeserved) welfaresupport e its function of pointing out how immoral the localGypsies were notwithstanding e does have some actual historicalgrounds and may in fact partly explain why some of my informantsmentioned the year 2004 as producing a bigger impact on theirlives than previous years. The year 2004 was a rather dramatic timefor my informants in Slovakia, because the welfare state wasdramatically cut back. While I would certainly not call the pre-2004Slovak welfare state “overgrown” (e.g. Radi�cová and Va�se�cka,2001), life before 2004 was indeed much easier than life afterthat year, especially for poor families (which tend to include morechildren and where parents are often unemployed). In the case ofone particular family of a married couple with ten children, thewelfare benefits were suddenly cut in half, literally from one day tothe next15 (from 16,000 SK to about 8500 SK at that time): underthe new law Slovak citizens were only entitled to receive childallowances for up to four children. Massive protests broke out thatled to riots and became the focus of extensive media and politicalattention (Maru�sák and Singer, 2009). Some observers see thesedevelopments as closely linked to previous policies under state-socialism.

5. The state-socialist experiment in assimilating “citizens ofgypsy origin”

While exact data are not available, it is estimated that asmany astwo-thirds of the circa 400,000 Roma dwelling in Slovakia (i.e. notpursuing a nomadic lifestyle) reside in so-called Gypsy settlementsnowadays. Gypsy settlements are permanent or semi-permanentrural residential areas that are socio-spatially segregated from thedominant non-Roma population and located either on the fringesof the gadje villages or further away, segregated by up to severalkilometres from the nearest non-Roma villages.16 Gypsy settle-ments usually take the form of informal and, very often illegal,clusters of simple residential structures, huts, or wooden shacks,and even quite recently rarely included dwellings made of cementor bricks. The number of Gypsy settlements in Slovakia has beenestimated at several hundreds to a thousand, housing up to300,000 Roma people (Mládek and Puka�cová, 2010: p. 44).

The location of the present-day settlement (in which I con-ducted my fieldwork) was not randomly chosen by the local Roma.The current site is about 2 km from the gadje village and sits ona mountain slope or, more precisely, in between a creek and a steephillside. This site was chosen by the Roma (and tacitly approved bythe gadje villagers) on the grounds that the location had no, oralmost no, significant value. The materiality of the site (i.e. pooraccessibility, sloping terrain, relatively close to a creek that regu-larly floods in the spring) makes this particular piece of land uselessfor economic or social exploitation: it cannot be used for farming orfor the construction of houses or other structures. The land occu-pied by other Gypsy settlements very often has (and even under

welfare reform of 2004 reduced family incomes by up to 40% (Scheffel, 2005: p. 66).16 Unfortunately, up until now there have been very few scholarly studies onGypsy settlements, but see (Budilová and Jakoubek, 2005; Filadelfiová et al., 2006;Jakoubek, 2004; Scheffel, 2005; or Stewart, 1997 on a failed development project ina Gypsy settlement). See also (Lacková, 1999) for a biographical sketch of a womanborn in a Gypsy settlement in Slovakia.

M. Ruzicka / Journal of Rural Studies 28 (2012) 81e8886

state-socialism had) little economic or social value. This situation isthe product of hundreds of years of tacit negotiation and the socio-economic dynamics between the local Roma and the local gadjesocieties.17

The fundamental goal for the paternalist socialist state was toassimilate the Roma/Gypsies by eliminating “the primitive oldGypsy way of life with all its bad habits” (Kalvoda, 1991: p. 97).These “socialist” goals were translated into two main strategies,which gradually e along with mandatory (albeit segregated)education and compulsory wage labour ewere supposed to lead tothe complete assimilation of Roma into the dominant society: (1)the spatial dispersal of the Roma and (2) their relocation or reset-tlement from the areas of rural Slovakia seen as backward intoindustrial centres in the Czech Republic. Resolution no. 502, issuedby the Czechoslovak government on October 13, 1965, introducedthe concept of the liquidation of “Gypsy streets, neighbourhoodsand settlements” as one of the primary instruments for solving the“Gypsy question” (see Jurová, 1996: p. 809e811). The order wasgiven to eliminate the unsuitable and “backward” Gypsy settle-ments and to relocate and disperse their inhabitants to variousurban areas in Slovakia and the Czech lands.18

Thus, the particular historical development in Czechoslovakiaafter WWII resulted in the formation of two different socio-spatialand economic contexts in which the Roma found themselves: onewas the “traditional” agriculturalerural context in which peoplehad lived for centuries (in Slovakia), while the other was the “new”

industrialeurban context into which a portion of Roma had movedonly relatively recently (in the Czech lands). The following sectionwill explore the economic and socio-spatial dynamics that have ledto the emergence and/or transformation of these particularcontexts.

6. Value of land and spatial exclusion in rural and urbancontexts

The newly capitalist (or again-capitalist) countries entered theprocess of market transition with a burdensome legacy in the formof the socialist socio-spatial order, namely, with the burden of whatcould be called the “socialist” uneven development. Shortly afterWWII, investments in industry were given priority over invest-ments in the built environment, producing a significant shortage ofhousing, especially in Czech cities (Short, 1990: p. 124). In an effortto remedy this acute shortage of housing the state invested in theextensive construction of new housing projects on the outskirts ofexisting cities (Maier, 2005), while the renovation of the existinghousing stock was completely neglected. As a result of thisdistinctive investment strategy, neighbourhoods close to citycentres, which had been built in the pre-war period and national-ized after the war, started to deteriorate. Quickly a symbolic hier-archy developed between the inner cities (i.e. low-qualityundesirable housing) and the new housing developments on theoutskirts of cities (higher-quality desirable housing) (see for

17 Historical evidence suggests that Roma/Gypsies became the “inner strangers”for Central and Eastern European societies as soon as they emerged in the region inthe first half of the 14th century (Crowe, 2007: p. 32; Horváthová, 1964). By notbeing allowed to become an integral part of feudal society e both in social andeconomic terms e the Roma were never allowed to become fully fledged partici-pants in the dominant economic system.18 Between 1972 and 1989, 4850 families were removed from Gypsy settlementsin Slovakia and were given housing elsewhere (Barany, 2002: p. 130). Around 1300settlements were originally slated for demolition, but between 1965 and 1968 thedemolition of about one-third of them was put off. In 1971, 930 Gypsy settlementsin Slovakia were still standing, and by the end of the 1980s over 300 Gypsysettlements remained, while the total population of Gypsies living in them grewrapidly (Ví�sek, 2005: p. 196).

example Szélenyi, 1996: p. 306). As a result of the overall lowsymbolic status of Roma/Gypsies in Czechoslovak society, whichwas transformed into institutional racism, i.e. into the state’sinability to (re)distribute resources on a race- (and/or ethnicity-)free basis, the bureaucratic apparatus at the municipal level ten-ded to allocate inner-city living-space that no one wanted to Romafamilies arriving in Czech cities from rural Slovakia. This discrimi-natory and racist pattern of allocating housing to Roma under state-socialism has also been reported by other observers (Barany, 2002:p. 130e131; Davidová, 1970: p. 48; Hau�sild, 2008: p. 83; Ladányi,1993: p. 30; Musil, 1987: p. 35; Pavel�cíková, 2008: p. 77).

As a result of the post-socialist transformation and the re-emergence of the market economy, capital investments were re-directed in conformity with the capitalist logic of urbanization.Cities, once again, became the main target of interest for “growthmachines”, the “apparatus[es] of interlocking progrowth associa-tions and governmental units“ (Logan andMolotch, 1987: p. 32; seealso Kulcsar and Domokos, 2005). The urban inner-city space,which had fallen into decay under state-socialism and was popu-lated mainly by people of lower socio-economic status (i.e.predominantly Roma and pensioners) became, once again, one ofthe prominent targets of capital investment (Harvey, 1985).

The resurgence of the capitalist logic of urbanization in post-socialist cities significantly altered the exchange value of space.City centres and city peripheries had the same exchange valueunder socialism e zero value, as the land was owned exclusively bythe state and was not for sale. In the post-socialist period, witha capitalist logic underlying urbanization, the exchange value ofland in cities (in terms of both price and rent) grew rapidly. In thissense, rural areas were less severely affected by shifts in the value ofland. They were not exempted from other dramatic forms oftransformation, however. In many rural areas, the process of de-collectivization was traumatic for many people, above all for thegadje villagers, as the post-socialist land reform introduced tensioninto local and kin-based social relations, as whole families fell apartin quarrels over issues of restitution and patrimony (Stewart, 1998;Abrahams, 1996; Verdery, 2004). These processes bypassed theinhabitants of the Gypsy settlements: for their inhabitants, therewas nothing to be restituted, as they had owned no land or otherreal estate prior to the nationalization of land in the late 1940s andduring the 1950s.

The fact that the post-socialist revolution in the value of spacehas not had much of an effect on the inhabitants of Gypsy settle-ments is the result of a particular, historically produced socio-economic equilibrium mentioned in Section 5. As outlined above,the Gypsy settlements occupy a no-man’s-land and are thus“exempt” from the burden of the necessarily higher living costsassociated with cities. This issue was interestingly reflected uponby one of my Roma informants. This single mother of two, who wasliving in one of the “tenements for rent-defaulters” with a lifetrajectory not dissimilar to Josef’s described above, explained:

“They [the woman’s relatives in rural Slovakia] can build housesthere. They just built a hut out of wood and they live... And here,if I set up a house like that, you know what they would do tome... They are not that... completely... they manage to live there.But here? Here the state doesn’t allow you to do that. To builda house somewhere, to set up a hut? It’s just impossible.”

(A.B., Kladno, 7.11.2009)It is important to remember that the Gypsy settlements tend to

be located in areas relatively untouched by land reform and otherforms of transformation of the value of land during post-socialism.This contrasts sharply with the situation in urban areas, where thepoor (and ethno-racially stigmatized) were often spatially drivenout of their residences for economic reasons. Unable to keep up

19 For more detailed discussion of shifting patterns of social assistance, its avail-ability to Roma families and wider social and cultural impacts of claiming benefitsfor Roma, see Schwarcz (2012) (this volume).

M. Ruzicka / Journal of Rural Studies 28 (2012) 81e88 87

with the rising costs of living and other associated costs, theeconomically unsuccessful are evicted and then displaced in socio-spatially segregated “new ghettos” (Bar�sová, 2003) set up by thedominant gadje society to contain those unable to keep pace withthe neoliberal reorganization of the economy, space and society.

Now we can summarize how the post-socialist transformationwas manifested differently in rural and urban environments: (1) atthe level of economic and socio-spatial organization and (2) at thelevel of how these changes were lived through by members of themost vulnerable groups. I would argue that any attempt to under-stand how a massive economic transformation affects the mostvulnerable populations must pay attention to how the value ofspace (in the form of price or rent) changes. While the Roma livingin urban settings have been fundamentally affected by rising rentand costs of living, in rural settlements most of these costs are non-existent, and thus their rise could not have been felt. The inhabi-tants of most Gypsy settlements are not required to pay any rent, astheir dwellings often stand in a no-man’s-land and they own theirhouses themselves, protecting them somewhat from sudden shiftsin the value of space and from the turmoil and sudden slumps ofreal estate markets (while the opposite applies to those living inhigh-density urban areas). This precarious equilibrium has allowedthe rural Roma to achieve relative continuity in their way of life andsocio-economic practices and institutions, through which theyhave maintained and reproduced their social and material statusliterally for centuries.

The “advantageous” position, which is at the very same timea highly vulnerable one, occupied by the inhabitants of rural Gypsysettlements puts them in a very different situation from that, inwhich their counterparts in urban areas tend to find themselves. Inurban areas of the Czech Republic, the Roma have been exposed toseveral rather dramatic ruptures. The first came on their arrivalfrom the Gypsy settlements in Slovakia, when the kin-based soli-darity networks were broken, as the residential units in which theyhad previously lived were split up e housing was allocated veryoften to individual nuclear families, not to whole social networks ofparticular extended families. The spatial rupture thus translatedinto a social and institutional rupture. The second rupture in thelives of urban Roma came after “capital” returned to the post-socialist cities, with consequences already sketched out above(loss of jobs e incapability to pay the rising costs of living e

displacement to newly forming ghettos).

7. Conclusion

When researching dominated, excluded and otherwisediscriminated minorities (i.e. the “others” of the dominant society),we run the potential risk of homogenising the particular “other”, i.e.of treating various instances of otherness as all the same (Cloke andLittle, 1997: p. 5). I started this article by pointing out that existingresearch on the marginality of Roma in East-Central Europe tendsto stress the degradation of their living conditions en masse, when itclaims rather generally that the “Roma fared better during theCommunist period than afterwards” (Guy, 2001: p. 13). In thisarticle I have argued instead for a more diversified view of theplurality of experiences of Roma communities in different socio-economic circumstances.

Two main factors proved decisive for producing this diversity ofexperiences. First, at the level of general post-socialist trans-formation, long-term unemployment e linked to polices ofprivatization e hit the under-educated or under-qualified Romadisproportionally, but especially so in the cities. Although the ruralRoma in Slovakia also lost their jobs in agriculture, many of themhad experienced hard times during socialism and furthermoreprofited from more generous social policies in the early stages of

post-socialism.19 The latter only changed more recently and leftthese families in more trouble than they had been in the earlierperiods. Second, the post-socialist spatial reorganization, especiallythrough the dramatic increase of the value of land in cities alsoaffected urban and rural areas differently.

These two dimensions of post-socialism have co-produced twosignificantly different contexts e an urban context, where there hasbeen a massive rise in the value of space resulting in thedisplacement of the poor from highly valued areas in cities, anda rural context of Gypsy settlements, which have been largelybypassed by the shifts in the economy and society. I would arguethat these two contexts are what have framed and thus mediatede

along with the different social policy contextse the “experience” ofthe post-socialist transformation in different ways. By makinggeneralized claims that the era of post-socialism has seen an overallslump in the socio-economic status of Roma communities inCentral and Eastern Europe, we risk becoming blind to the diversityand variability of ways inwhich particular Roma communities havelived through and experienced the years since 1989.

In suggesting that for some Roma communities (especially thosemost socio-economically and spatially marginalised) not that muchhappened during the market transition, it is not my intention tosuggest that the world around them did not change. Apart fromsome potentially positive changes in the possibilities for deliveringgreater social and political justice, there are few reasons e againstthe background of the anti-Gypsy sentiments and policies being re-introduced throughout Europe nowadays e to be overly optimisticabout future prospects for decreasing the level of social exclusionand material deprivation of the Roma in European societies. Withthe demise of the socialist state and its virtually unlimited power toimpose central plans of various kinds, the newly reorganizedneoliberal state e with its political objective of limiting its ownpower for the benefit of the markete has so far been unable to takefull responsibility for and appropriate actions towards integratingthe Roma communities into civil society.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank to my wife for her patience and supportwhile I was working on this article. I am also grateful to participantsin the workshop “Rural Realities in the Post-socialist Space:Understanding Social, Cultural and Political Change in the Russianand Eastern European Countryside”, held in November 2010 inGlasgow, for their valuable comments and insights, and to theeditors of this special issue for their invaluable help with finalisingthis article. I have also benefited from the support of two institu-tions: University of Vienna (project IK 223001) and Czech ScienceFoundation (project no. P404/12/P024).

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