The Permanence of Anti-Roma Racism

Racism, Memory, and Erasure of the Roma People | The Acceptable Racism in Europe | Margareta Matache on Jay Shapiro's Dilemma Podcast

Anti-Roma racism, one of Europe’s oldest and most enduring racisms, has been neglected in mainstream theories and discourse. This book situates anti-Roma racism within national and intra-continental histories and global scholarship, exploring its specific and universal underpinnings and manifestations and its interconnectedness with other systems of oppression.

The Permanence of Anti-Roma Racism offers a theoretical perspective on the roots of anti-Roma racism, tracing its genesis in the system of racialized slavery in the principalities of Molvoda and Wallachia and the politics of killings, expulsions, and entry bans across Europe in the late Middle Ages. Furthermore, employing theoretical frameworks of structural oppressions, anti-colonial and decolonial thought, racialization, and intersectionality, this book analyzes how deep historical legacies continue to shape anti-Roma racism as an enduring, structural form of oppression.

This scholarly work is essential for policymakers, practitioners, scholars, and students working on the sociology of racialization, global race and structural racisms, and European history. It defines, categorizes, and unpacks the processes and mechanisms of racialization and anti-Roma racism, shedding light on a system of oppression too often left unspoken.

Erratum: The photograph labeled Tismana Monastery (p. 75) depicts Vodița Monastery. This correction couldn’t be resolved during production, but it will be included in future printings and translations.

Margareta Matache is a lecturer in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the co-founder and the director of the Roma Program at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University. She is also a member of the O’Neill-Lancet Commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination, and Global Health and co-editor of Time for Reparations: A Global Perspective (2021) and Realizing Roma Rights (2017). With over 25 years of experience in organizational leadership, policy advocacy, social change interventions, and academic work, Dr. Matache has dedicated her career to understanding, framing, and addressing anti-Roma racism and other systems of oppression.