by Cerasela Voiculescu
[T]he destruction of hyperprofit necessarily entails challenging and attacking infrapower. Michel Foucault
Neoliberal Governance, Education and Roma in Romania. Sociological Research Online, Sage
Next project, a theoretical article: Dialogues with Jacques Ranciere, Jacques Derrida and Jean Luc Nancy/Rethinking the Political, Anarchic Democracy, Divine Violence/Suspended Revolution and Destituent Power (work in progress). Also, you can read my academic monograph's philosophical discussion: The Return to Political/The Return to the Political Subject.
Abstract State education is neo/liberalism’s preeminent form of self-governance, included in programmes of governance, which aim at integrating into the structures of the state populations (e.g. Roma) whose cultural constituencies and forms of knowledge are not yet subjected to market rationality. Based on interviews and participant observation, the dialectical communication between Roma local forms of knowledge and state education is critically explored by looking at interactions between teachers, school mediators, and Roma adults. Cultural idiosyncrasies are further analysed in relation to the utopian character of European neoliberal programme of social integration for the Roma. The article argues for a constructive dialogue between state education and idiosyncratic Roma forms of knowledge and culture, which can engender authentic forms of empowerment.
Introduction
[academic journal article accepted for publication in Sociological Research Online, 4th February, British Sociological Association, Sage, previously submitted to 6 international peer reviewed journals]
[academic journal article accepted for publication in Sociological Research Online, 4th February, British Sociological Association, Sage, previously submitted to 6 international peer reviewed journals]
Roma have historically been
perceived as the undisciplined subjects of the state, who have been assimilated and subjected to state institutions through projects designed to
engineer integration and compliance. In Romania, they were slaves until the
mid-nineteenth century in Wallachia and Moldovia, belonging to royal masters,
monasteries or boyars and serfs in Transylvania (Achim 2004). Royal serfs were permitted to move freely and
they simply had to pay taxes to the crown. The other groups were settled and worked
in agriculture and constructions. This classification made by principalities
reproduced structural differences between Roma groups which have persisted over
time, and which are noticeable even today. Whereas former nomadic groups such
as Kalderash partially kept their mobile lifestyle and are engaged in lucrative
businesses and trading, other groups such as Romanianised Roma were assimilated
by the state and remained sedentary and more dependent on state welfare (Voiculescu,
2017). After abolition of slavery, the Romanian Roma were not completely
enfranchised insofar they were not offered access to agricultural land. Under
socialism, the Roma were employed as workers and provided with accommodation
and welfare. Since the 1960s, large
parts of the Roma populations were sedenterised and some other parts proletarianised.
The Roma, as with all the other minorities, were also the subjects of the main
state ideological projects and expected to endorse a proletarian identity and
relinquish their ethnic and cultural background, which constituted a barrier to
socialist nationalistic programs. Socialist education was part of the state project of
modernization through industrialization and urban expansion and a medium for the
transmission and infusion of Communist ideology. In Romania, the Communist
party ‘aimed at a complete takeover of education by the state’ (Glenn 1995:91)
and transformation of education into a primary ideological state apparatus.
Schooling was a primary source for forging new subjectivities as part of the
socialist economic system.
In Romania the transition to the so called liberal democracy and
capitalism did not necessarily bring a liberation from forms of domination and
control, but instead constituted a major ideological shift and a new source of
subjection for those freed from the authoritarianism of the Communist Party
state. Neoliberalism was the principal mentality of governance, exported by
Western liberal democracies to the newly “liberated” Eastern European societies
as a form of ‘know-how’ for reconstructing the state according to the newly
emerging market economy, aiming at governing society through market oriented
models of self-governance (Dean 2007). Generally, neoliberalism involves welfare state reduction and implicitly
social exclusion of large parts of population who do not own capital. This
exclusion was exacerbated in post 1989 Eastern Europe and Romania, where Roma who
never owned land and other properties were pushed into extreme poverty and
long-term unemployment without any support from the state. In addition, neoliberal
ideology advances state education as self–governance among the racialized and
the poor (Hill and Kumar 2009), which refers to self-reliance, discipline and the
production of new subjectivities, self-producing welfare, and transfer of social
risk from state governance to citizens’ forms of control (Davies and Bansel 2007).
From a neoliberal viewpoint, state education provided by the neoliberal state
would increase access to the labour market and financial resources, and
implicitly reduce the social costs of the state (Carter and Lakes 2011). In the
process of constituting neoliberal subjects, individuals are expected to
incorporate models of choice and entrepreneurial behaviour, which individuals
cannot differentiate from their own will. Individuals follow some moral absolutes,
but they conceive themselves as free and independent from the state and capital
(Davies and Bansel 2007). On
the other hand, the informal localized form of knowing, another source of
constituting subjectivity, dealing with social dynamics and uncertainties,
results from the Roma’s experiences and adaptation to social and economic
environments which is manifested in ‘practical skills, variously called
know-how’ (Scott 1998: 311). It is generally overridden by state ideology and
is inherently dynamic ‘plastic, local, and divergent’, ‘constantly being
expanded through practical experimentation’ (p.323). These forms of knowledge
and vernacular manifestations are characteristic of populations such as the
Roma as sources of undisciplined labour power in capitalism, which
neoliberalism requests to be controlled, governed and taxed. They are in Foucault’s
terms, ‘subjugated knowledge(s)’,’disqualified as nonconceptual knowledges’
(Foucault 2003: 7) and continuously subjected to colonizing powers of dominant
knowledge (s).
In this article I explore the relation between formal/state education
and Romani knowledge and culture as a dialogical empowering project and I
question the program of social integration as an ungenuine neoliberal project,
which aims at disciplinarisation of the
the Roma through state education
and welfare state reduction. In relation to this, a question which can be
raised is one which reveals the Roma to be active participants in the
constitution of their own subjectivities: How do Roma challenge the state
representative’s narratives, which are
the expression of neoliberal state domination of culture ?
To
be more specific, domination of culture refers to Bourdieu and Passeron’s
(1977) discussion of authoritative education, which is considered to be a main instrument
of cultural domination. The dominant form of education or culture
discriminates and ranks alternative forms of knowledge on ‘the economic or the
symbolic market’ (p.7), reflecting and reproducing the existing structure of
power in a society, its associated values and lifestyles. Following Bourdieu
and Passeron (1977), the Romanian state offers the dominant form of education, which
is implicitly used to discipline the most excluded of postsocialist capitalism
– the Roma. During 90s education was conceived as a long term program which
would reduce the side effects produced by restructuring and the privatization of the economy. Massive displacement
and high rates of unemployment needed fast management through mechanisms of
disciplinarization (e.g. state education) as these social consequences of an
accelerated transition to capitalism were able to produce public discontent and
disorder. In addition, neoliberal program of social inclusion, advanced by
powerful transnational governmental actors (e.g. WB, UNDP) advocated the same
approach. It followed exclusively an economic instrumentality and was primarily
focused on raising the levels of education among ‘the excluded’, in an attempt
to integrate them in the new labour markets as tax payers. This clearly was not
possible without any substantial social support offered to many Romanian Roma
living in extreme poverty (e.g. extremely poor housing conditions). After socialism,
which provided a substantial welfare system to workers, Romanian state dismantled
the social security system, which has been sustaining Western social
development and capitalism. The so called social ‘benefits’ or cash offered to
the poorest of society are embarrassingly symbolic[1].
However, The Roma Decade Program,
which developed as an international collaboration between EU, major
international actors and Eastern European aimed to include the Roma as entrepreneurial
subjects in the emergent liberal economic system and reduce the high state
costs produced by their unemployment. The main concerns were that exclusion and
unemployment among the Roma were risks for the state and the market that needed
to be devolved to individuals, which presumably would be able integrate in
society and the state through formal education solely. However, formal education as self-government aimed to
function as a mechanism of disciplinarisation of the subject and subjection to
state power, which never ceases ‘to homogenize its citizen, delegitimising
all loyalties except those that bind the individual to the state’ (Robinson
1988: 529). Forms which competed with state ideology were always to be found in
religion, local knowledge, cultural family background and ethnic identification,
which were able to foster alternative loyalties and impede the complete
adherence of citizens to the state’s exclusivist vision of governance of the
self and community and its implicit homogenising nationalistic aims. For
instance, after 1990s, Pentecostalism, became for Romanian Roma an alternative
ideology to state governance, a community form of self-governance in a
dialectical relation with the state (Voiculescu 2012). Similarly, the article mainly argues that state education needs to
communicate with Roma alternative ideological loyalties and forms of local
knowledge, which can contribute to development of idiosyncratic models of self-governance
and empowerment among the Roma in Romania.
In the following section, the relation between
knowledge, and neoliberal social integration is explored theoretically. Field site and method are
presented in the following section, which leads to the main part of the article.
The latter explores state education and its mechanisms of mediation in
communication with Roma’s local knowledge and teachers’ semiotic interventions.
At the end, all these observations are developed into a critical discussion on
the relation between education, social integration, local knowledge and neoliberalism.
Knowledge,
subject and neoliberal state integration
As
Foucault (2002) argues, the institutions of capitalist society (e.g. schools,
factories, prisons etc.) produced the subject (e.g. individuals were
transformed into workers) as a category of governance through which individuals
were governed as labour. School itself aimed at disciplining and constituting
the individuals as subjects of capitalism by producing knowledge about them and
correcting their behaviour (e.g. correctional psychology). These
power-knowledge mechanisms have been fixed by early capitalism’s institutions
as modern practices of governing the self. From schools to factories, 19th
century capitalism built up an institutional network of social control (e.g.
schools, factories, prisons, hospitals), an infrapower, or ‘a network of
sequestration’ (p.81) of social existence. People’s
living time was transformed into labour time, ‘so as to be effectively used and
thereby transformed into hyperprofit’ (Foucault 2002:86). Hence, pedagogy or
education as an existing power relation between a dominant culture/
science-transmitter and minor culture/science-recipient ( Bourdieu and Passeron
1977) was brought under the control of the early capitalist state as a new
practice of government of the self, able to transform individuals into subjects
of capitalism or labour (Foucault 1988, Marshall 1995, 1997). Similarly, as
many authors in the field have argued (Davies and Bansel 2007, Leask 2012,
Macleavy 2008, Dean 2007, Peters 2010) neoliberalism,
which emerged as an ideology in the 1980s, aims
to constitute subjects of governance and incorporate them into the capitalist
state through disciplinary techniques, which are currently part of transnational
programs of social inclusion/integration. Nevertheless, the aim of neoliberal social
integration of the Roma through state education is welfare state reduction and the
transformation of those acting outside the labour markets into obedient
subjects of neoliberalism, who need to become responsible for their own social
development through forms of self-government offered by neoliberalism (e.g.
state education). In this case, the program
of social integration does not appear as a genuine mechanism for the
integration of the Roma into society and their equal representation in the public
sphere. It is rather a mechanism of disciplinarisation of the poor or the
paupers, who might revolt against the state and seek different forms of
self-governance to constitute themselves as autonomous subjects, able to
challenge neoliberal governance. As Procacci (1991) argues, pauperism
itself is the object of neoliberal governance. It is generally considered a
form of “insubordination” and “ignorance” that needs authoritarian governmental
intervention, for which ‘the objective is the elimination not of inequality,
but of difference’ (p. 160). For instance as it has been previously
acknowledged (Powell 2010) state social integration of those considered marginal,
such as Gypsy Travellers in the UK, opposes their cultural identity to the
state’s ‘civilisation’ project, which promises a modern homogenous governable
society within the ambit of the state. Insubordination to state ‘civilising’
project is sometimes policed by the government with the help of public agencies (e.g. police, local councils),
which share information in order to gain control over Gypsy Travellers’ behavioural
patterns (e.g. camping, economic activity) and that can profile them as
disobedient offenders (James 2007 ). In
addition, marginalised people such as mobile Gypsy Travellers are many times
treated by public institutions as ‘sick’ members of society, who are requested
to accept the loss of cultural difference and their “‘inclusion’ into the very
structures responsible for their alienation
and dependency” (O’Hanlon 2010: 241).
Likewise,
neoliberalism favours state-based education
over Roma local knowledge (s), which continue to be considered an expression of
a conservative approach by the Romanian state and international actors in
development (UNDP 2003,World Bank 2005). On the other hand, state education
associated with social integration is usually presented as value-free and
enlightening knowledge, freeing subjects from traditional bonds. Integration
into mainstream itself proves to be problematic as well. For the case of Black
People social integration was considered a liberal project, insofar as it advocated
for race neutrality and conceded cultural relativism to universalism. Liberal or
neoliberal integration “tends to privilege individual autonomy over the needs
of minority groups” (Adams 2006: 266) and preserve the previous relations of
subordination of the social structure that needs to include the subjects of
discrimination, without creating the premises for revolutionary status change
(Peller 2016).
Furthermore,
as Scott (1998) suggests, the alternative forms of knowledge are defaced and
even annihilated by bureaucratic capitalism, which performs the same
simplification of the social as socialism did. Tracing back the programs of
state integration, socialism meant for the Romanian Roma increased levels of
state education and employment, which nonetheless simplified local realities
and failed to fulfil its programs of development (Scott 1998). The next section
offers a brief presentation of the fieldsite and the studied populations.
Fieldsite
This article is
based on a qualitative case study in Romania and an analysis of documents
produced by international organisations and actors in development such as World
Bank, European Union, United Nations Development Program and Organisation for
Security and Cooperation in Europe. The qualitative field research was carried
out in spring 2016, in a Romanian town, Medeleni, of 10 000 inhabitants, of
which 1000 residents are Roma. Many of them are members of a mobile group
called Kalderash, who used to be nomads before 1960s, when the socialist state
enforced their sedentarisation. The reason I chose to study this group is that
it is one of the few Roma groups[2] which has not been
assimilated by the Romanian state, and its members are generally wealthy, making
money out of informal businesses, owning big villas and luxurious cars. Their example
can suggest that their lifestyle, independent from the state, has proved to be
successful compared to the statist authoritarian approach towards the poorer
populations. Also, their lucrative economic activities and mobile lifestyle
helped them to sustain their self-esteem and Roma identity.
During early socialism, the Kalderash, as
ambulant smiths and traders, were not governed by state institutions (e.g.
school, army, factories). Small family groups lead by a customary leader used
to travel all over the country, manufacture and sell their copper made products,
used by farmers for alcohol production (e.g. cauldrons). The informal trading
of the copper was largely restricted by the socialist state as was the informal
production of alcohol. Many of the Kalderash families, who used to accumulate
and invest money in gold, were physically abused by the socialist state police,
which largely aimed at seizing their gold resources. The state’s violent actions
were made possible through the centralisation and capture of customary leaders,
who were empowered by the security police to use physical violence and collect the
Kalderash’s gold. This process progressively destroyed the Kalderash’s
customary leadership and by implication, their form of self-governance.
Nevertheless, the Kalderash continued to travel seasonally as informal traders,
ambulant smiths and, currently, as businessmen[3] selling old technology
from old plants to smaller firms. Most of them are reasonably wealthy and very
confident in their family culture and knowledge of handicraft, transmitted from
one generation to another. Some adults chose to attend second chance
educational program, send their children to local schools and help them getting
access to a driving licence, needed for driving their expensive and luxurious
cars (e.g. Mercedes, Audi Q7, BMW etc.). All them are very proud of their Roma
identity and differentiate themselves from other Roma groups, who have always
been sedentary poor and subject to state policies (e.g. Romanianised Roma).
They consider themselves true Gypsies due to their traditional clothes and
cultural practices (e.g. customary occupations, wealth, independence from state
institutions, ability to speak Romani language) (Foszto, 2004).
The
field research is based on participant observation and six interviews with
teachers, Kalderash adults, school mediators, who have participated in the
state educational programs. The interviews were carried out, with their
approval, in Romanian, at their homes and I also carried out participant
observation during a class (second chance to education) taught in a local
school. All Kalderash speak Romanian as their second native language, which is
the language of commerce. Therefore, Romanian, like Romani, facilitates the research
access to some of their core values, which are associated with their economic
activity and identity. These methods aimed at collecting data about the way
Roma understand the role of the state education in their lives, but also the
mode in which state representatives, including Roma experts, negotiate these
meanings and promote state culture.
The
next section of the article critically looks at the European and state program
of social integration of the Roma and its implications for education by
developing a detailed analysis of the discussions between the Roma and local
authorities about the role of state education and local forms of knowledge in the
constitution of Roma subjectivities
State education and Roma
practical knowledge
After 1989, education as a state project of social integration
of the Roma was assumed not only by the national government, but also by the EU,
which issued general norms (EC 2011) for national governments to follow. The
national strategies were mainly subsumed under a common project - the decade of
Roma inclusion 2005-2015 - run by 13 European countries with large Roma
populations. Priorities and areas targeted for improvement were education,
employment, health, and housing. As stated in the main description, ‘a central
pillar of the Decade, a Roma Education Fund (REF) was established in 2005 to
expand educational opportunities for Roma communities in Central and
Southeastern Europe’[4]. State education was presented as the main form of self-government
and panacea for post-1989 Roma’s poverty. After the loss of the socialist
welfare and economy, the emergent neoliberal state encouraged by international
organisations in development did not fill this gap, but transferred the
previous social responsibilities and social security costs from the state to
the large mass of unemployed Roma individuals, living in extreme poverty. The
latter were allegedly expected to use education to integrate themselves in the
emergent labour markets. Overall, the new neoliberal direction of governance
aimed to reduce state welfare costs (see EC 2010, EC 2011 etc.) at the expense
of economic investments and capital expansion.
Roma unemployment and
under-employment represent an enormous drain on CEE economies. Welfare payments
upon which a large share of Roma people depend represent an immediate cost to
governments (…). [I]f Roma can be successfully equipped and brought into the
workforce, their integration should boost growth through their own productive
efforts, skills, consumption and investment. (UNDP 2005)
Another reason for widespread unemployment is that
many Roma have obsolete skills, which are no longer relevant for the labour
market. (WB, 2005 : 192)
It is also
suggested that Roma idiosyncratic forms of cultural organisation and knowledge are
classified as traditional and opposed to state education as the only modern
successful form of self-government, disciplinarisation of the subject and
integration in the state. However, these so called ‘traditions’ are source of
practical knowledge and self-government,
which are constitutive of Roma independent subjectivities. In this case
neoliberalism and the state aim to penetrate and dislocate those local
engagements that produce disobedience to state institutions through ‘the
imposition of a cultural arbitrary by an arbitrary power’ (Bourdieu
and Passeron 1977: 5). The
cultural arbitrary is state education itself,
which is instituted and promoted through mediators or brokers (e.g. school
mediators), who are expected to assume the role of proselytism.
In
Romania, the ongoing school mediation program 2015-2020 (Romanian Government
2015), funded by the European Union, aims at the social integration of Roma
communities into state structures, through a developed national network of
school mediators. The Roma can be convinced by the state of the benefits of
schooling, from inside their communities and with the help of Roma mediators,
who are expected to mediate between the Roma and all local state institutions (e.g.
school, church, police, social work office). The mediator as a state broker should
also be able to translate the institutional language into local cultural
understanding and generate not only an interface for the state, but also a strong
link from below, between the Roma and local state institutions.
As
part of the governmental strategy 2015-2020, the school mediator program
continues to be funded by the Romanian government and European Social Fund for
schools where 15 % of the pupils are Roma[5]. Locally,
in Medeleni, where I have carried out fieldwork, there are two school mediators,
who deal with school issues from within the Roma communities. Usually the
school mediators are sedentary Roma, who graduated high-school and some of them
engage in fiddle playing, a very lucrative, independent activity, part of the
socialist informal economy. The Kalderash have a lower level of formal
education and most of them are not eligible for these positions. In this
context, I am interested in understanding the way school mediators and teachers
approach the Kalderash community, usually considered “traditional”, with low
levels of state education. More specifically, I look at the way the
“traditional”/”modern” opposition is used as part of the state’s language of
cultural domination, in Bourdieu and Passeron’s terms (1977), and performed by
school mediators as state brokers. On the other hand, I aim at revealing their
resistance to the state’s cultural domination by looking at the way the Kalderash
linguistic instantiations challenge state subject. In the following, I present
the local school mediator, teachers and some of their conversations with
authorities, which expose the dialectical relation between state education and Kalderash
practical knowledge.
Relu,
a sedentary Roma, is the school mediator for the Kalderash community. He comes
from an extended sedentary Roma family, the most renowned family of fiddle
players, with many Roma representatives currently working for the local and
regional council. The regional Roma expert, Corina, a member of the same
family, helped many of her relatives, who were no longer successful as fiddlers,
to become Roma experts and school or health mediators and, in this way, to get work
contracts. Relu and his wife are among them. Whereas Relu is a school mediator
in Medeleni, his wife is a health mediator in the nearby villages. He mediates
between the Roma community, in this case the Kalderash community, school, and
local authorities. His role is rather difficult in that he needs to represent
the state and the two different Roma groups, which have developed different
relations with state institutions. He focuses his attention primarily on those
who already have been historically included in state structures (e.g.
Romanianised Roma) and is generally loyal to state institutions, considering
state education to be an instrument of disciplining those acting independently
from state structures.
Similarly,
the school mediator and two other school teachers, Grigore and Diana[6] endorse
the state perspective and as state educators identify Kalderash’ early marriage
as the main cause for their school dropout. Early marriages are considered by
the state to be signs of “traditional behaviour” or “backwardness”. Seen from
below, the picture is much more dynamic and offers further clarification. All Kalderash
families practice endogenous marriages and are very interested in marrying
their children as early as possible to ensure they do not miss the best
opportunities for marital arrangements, and keep the wealth within the family. As
many of the old Kalderash families
told me, during socialism, before the settlement of 1960s, nomad lifestyle was
a barrier to family formation and many of them used to get married at older
ages. However, nowadays early marriages are adaptations to a new life style
supported by high earnings. Yet, the school teachers, Grigore and Diana, and school
mediator Relu consider the Kalderash’s cultural practices to be forms of
resistance and even in defiance of state laws and projects of social
integration. Relu, the school mediator explained about a debate on the theme of
early marriage he initiated at one of the regional regular meetings on Roma
issues, where a Roma deputy in the Romanian Parliament, was present.
Relu-
the school mediator : As a school mediator, I cannot solve the early marriage problem,
I said. Authorities have to intervene. Such a thing is not possible. When we
will stop having early marriages we will stop having school leaving.
Traian-
Kalderash customary leader from a nearby locality- stood up and told everyone: We
cannot give that up because that is our tradition.
Roma
deputy replied to him: I see you drive a Mercedes. Did you drive it in the
fields?
Traian:
No, I drive it on the main road.
Roma
deputy: So you benefit from roads and all the utilities in this country. Why do
not you respect the country’s laws? If in this country children are not allowed
to marry at this age, why do not you respect that? (interview with Relu, school
mediator).
The fragment suggests that Roma state representatives
and Kalderash customary leaders have different cultural understandings. The
scenario would have probably been different if the Kalderash customary leader
with an idiosyncratic cultural approach had been the school mediator, raising
the issue of early marriages. It is also interesting to note that the Roma
state representatives like Relu and Nicolae are settled Roma, who preach the
state institutional discourse to the Kalderash community. For the state
mediators Romanian citizenship overlaps with their identities and, like many
other Romanians, consider that a lack of belonging to state institutions is impossible.
This nonreflective attachment is part of the state ideology which continuously
engages mechanisms of constituting the subjects. Kalderash mobile traders have never been close
to state institutions and spontaneously resist forms of domination of their culture:
‘What has state done for us ? We have
nothing to do with the state’. This
common statement suggests that compared to other Roma groups, who consider
themselves to be part of the state (e.g. Romanianised Roma), the Kalderash
refuse to constitute themselves as subjects of the state and continue to preserve
their ideological belonging to group culture. Furthermore, the “tradition” of early
marriages, which is totally informal, is actually the modern product of the
economic and social transformations and irregularities, which occurred after
1989, to which the Kalderash adapted successfully by practising lucrative
informal activities. On these grounds, early marriages are not “traditions” per se, but
according to Hobsbawm (1994) they are “invented traditions”, adapted to
modernity, in a seamless dynamic with social and economic transformations,
experienced by the Kalderash themselves. Nevertheless, state representatives
continue to regard these “invented traditions” as retrograde and an expression
of conservatism, which hinder the process of social integration of Roma communities
or, in other terms, their insertion into the state structure. For example, as a
state representative and school mediator, Relu considers that state education
is part of a long process of emancipation or ’normalization’.
They
will be emancipated and will become normal, they will respect the law and they
will go to school to become citizens. However, now they come to local and
regional meetings. They communicate differently with the authorities. Before it
was not possible to meet and talk to them.
(Relu, school mediator)
Relu equates
emancipation with normalization and obedience to the law and the state, a
route, from his viewpoint, everyone should follow. Interestingly, this use of
’normalization’ matches Foucault’s discussion of governmental power, which by enacting
the power of normalization (Foucault 2003) structures social existence and
constitutes individuals as citizens and implicitly as subjects of the
neoliberal state. In this context, state education appears as part of the
unidirectional process of normalisation
- becoming a citizen - which
implies standardization of local knowledge (s) of those living outside its
boundaries, according to the main state institutions and rules.
Nevertheless,
the Kalderash have always approached the state as an external actor,
successfully practiced mobile informal economic activities and were never
interested in becoming labour, low paid work force in an underdeveloped
socialist or postsocialist market economy. Most of them are wealthy, but they
are continuously regarded by the state and majority as disobedient outsiders,
who reject integration into society and state structures (Cretan and Powell
2018). Compared to more assimilated groups of Roma, they live in a dialectical
relation with state institutions and construct their identities and independent
subjectivities through resistance to the state and its mechanisms of
integration, engaged by neoliberal governance.
State
education, offered after 1990s, as part of a state project of social inclusion
in the labour markets was seen as having a different value among the Kalderash.
In the last few years, many Kalderash from Medeleni, especially women, who do
not travel constantly, started to attend the second chance to education program
in order to get a minimum level of literacy, which allows them to apply for a
driving license. None of the Kalderash women I talked to was interested in
getting an educational basis for
an employment contract. In
this case, formal education for the so called “disadvantaged groups”, as a
state integration program, was instrumentalised and domesticated by the Kalderash.
An interesting illustration of these distinct understandings of state
education, conceived disjunctively by the Roma and school educators, comes from
one of my participatory observation sessions, carried out during classes
attended by adult Kalderash women. One class I attended, entitled “Education for health and
good manners”, was run by a local Romanian teacher, Gina, engaged with the
second chance educational program. I reproduce here a fragment of the
discussion the teacher had with the Kalderash women, aiming at negotiating
their cultural norms.
G:
I read so much about your lives. You are very modern (...). You need to
preserve your customs, traditions (...). You do not have to feel ashamed of
what you are. A long time ago, only queens were dressed like that. I want to
raise your self-esteem. You are modern and you are not as other Gypsies. I do
not agree with letting your children be raised by your mothers-in-law.
Kalderash
women laughing: We wait for the law to be enforced. If they catch us, they
should send our children to the child protection agency. [a]
G:
The law is made by you! I heard that many of you are believers and
they say it is not good to live as a couple without being married[7].
Kalderash
woman laughing: I got married at the local council to get the money (money offered
by the government for the first marriage). [b]
G:
In future, do not accept these early marriages, let your children live their
childhood. (class conversation, Medeleni)
The conversation
shows the negotiation of cultural norms and how the teacher tries to
create closeness between the notions of “modern”
and “traditional”. Yet, early marriages are not acceptable. Also, Gina claims
to use the terms “modern” to generate self-esteem, which is expected to be internalised
by the Kalderash women, in the process of producing substantial changes in
their lifestyles. However, from my fieldwork experience, Kalderash are wealthy
Roma with high levels of self-esteem in relation to local poorer farmers,
bureaucrats and other Romani, who cannot afford a luxurious lifestyle (e.g.
large villas and expensive cars). That also explains Kalderash women’s
amusement as a reaction to the teacher’s speech and terminology. Their answers
challenge the language of state cultural domination used by the teacher, with
regard to relations between Kalderash women, daughters in law and mothers in
law, with little consideration for their own understanding of “modern” or
“traditional” lifestyle. Kalderash adult men are even less interested in state
education and they prefer to concentrate on their informal businesses. On the
other hand, both women and men look to preserve traditional skills within the
family, but they encourage children to attend school as that would help them to
obtain driving licences and also become more knowledgeable in relation to their
family businesses.
However, the teacher’s speech is
mainly a call for change, in the language of the state, for the Kalderash to
follow the state laws and relinquish the “tradition” of early marriage, which
is considered to be the major source of school dropout. Generally, the
discussion proves not to be a dialogical reflection and inquiry into the cultural
norms of the Kalderash or, in other words, a dialogue free of domination and an
engagement of the teacher with the audience. Notwithstanding, Kalderash women make
use of common language to perform sarcastic ‘breaks with prior context or,
indeed, with ordinary usage’ (Butler 1997:145) or a ‘rehearsal of the conventional formulae in non-conventional ways’ (p.147)
(see class conversation a, b) to challenge the state language and the legitimacy
of its workings. The latter assume that allegiance to state institutions and
its praxis are modern and endowing, and all those values and cultural practices
that are resistant to its aims are backward and associated with low
self-esteem. These speech acts, which reveal idiosyncratic cultural practices
are acts of resistance to state power and can expose the formation of an
independent subject. A distinct linguistic expression that confirms these acts
of resistance to state integration and especially to state education comes from
Mircea, a roof painter and ambulant smith. In the following interview excerpt,
Mircea discusses the role of state education in his life.
C: Do you find state education
useful?
M: No. Someone asked
why I do not want a degree. Why should I have one?
Gypsies [Kalderash]
will never have a profession as they say, a qualification
in their life.
C: Are you sure?
M: I cannot say for
sure because you can’t be sure what is going to happen in the
next 5–6 years. First,
they were with the cauldrons, and then they started to
invent something new [my
emphasis]. Painting roofs was invented. We saw it
works and we decided to
keep doing it. (Mircea, Kalderash man)
Mircea suggests that state education
does not necessarily provide the useful knowledge people can use to adapt to
the neoliberal Romanian social and economic environment, characterised by unemployment,
low salaried jobs (undifferentiated income taxation) and lack of a social
security system. The use of ‘invention’ suggests informal ways of practicing
economic activities and overcoming difficulties, created by an inefficient
unaccountable state bureaucracy and an unstable economic landscape which favour
the nouveau riche. ‘Invention’ captures
both the activity of the agent in an uncertain and fast-transforming economic
sphere and the imaginary adaptation to opportunities to be exploited. It can
also refer to what Deleuze and Guattari (2005:409) call the itinerant’s
‘intuition in action’, a flexible approach to economic life and ability to adapt to both local and unknown unsettled
environments while moving within and across social life. Yet,
transnational organisations in development such as UNDP and OSCE devalue these
forms of practical knowledge adapted to a neoliberal economy that harshly excludes
those who do not own financial capital and also Roma cultural idiosyncrasies,
which were never considered able to meet the expected economic competitiveness found
in the current global market economy.
The
issue of employability is also often approached by focusing on traditional
skills as sources of potential competitive advantages for Roma workers. But are
these skills marketable today and could they serve as a basis for sustainable
employment? The answer is generally “no” (…). Developing and maintaining
competitive advantages today inevitably mean integration, which implies a
certain abandonment of distinctiveness. (UNDP 2002: 35-36)
Low
education levels are contributing to welfare dependency or reliance on the
black or grey economy. Roma have minimal access to state economic-development
programmes. (OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights 2008:11)
These fragments show how neoliberal governance favours economic reasoning
over Roma cultural distinctiveness, which remains a source for the constitution
of a subject independent from the state, able to produce forms of
self-governance and self-empowerment. The latter need to face the effects
produced by radical neoliberalisation and privatisation of economy: extreme
poverty, unemployment, low salaried jobs and lack of social welfare. However, international
organisations in development consider that state education is the main solution
to poverty and the so called marginalisation of the Roma. This direction of
governance is also the very best expression of neoliberal economic reasoning
that nonetheless emphasises welfare state reduction.
Notwithstanding, as we saw, Mircea and many other
Roma (Kalderash and sedentary Roma) are aware that state education is generally
an abstraction, which does not necessarily empower
people in a capitalist society affected by high unemployment rates, social
inequality and institutional corruption, which limits access to social services
and citizenship rights. Hence, practical
knowledge is used for adaptation to an unstable social and economic
environment, which is construed in dialectical opposition to state mapping or
reasoning. The first type of knowledge emerges from their experience and is
adjusted in interaction with the unstable economic and social environment. The
other form of knowledge, institutionalised by the state through school
education, is fixed and rigid, and is part of a general neoliberal discourse of
governance. Pretending that the so called liberal markets will be able to
absorb and fairly remunerate all those educated, state education has a
different aim that of transforming the
Roma into the disciplined subjects of the state. To sum up, state social
integration and associated educational programs, promoted from below by Roma
school mediators or teachers are external forms of governance, which generally
dismiss Roma practical knowledge as an internal mechanism of constituting an independent
subjectivity, not yet recognised by neoliberalism, which generally strips their
capacity for self-governance and empowerment. In the final section, these
concluding ideas are developed into a discussion about neoliberalism, the social
integration of the Roma, social security and state education.
Discussion: state
education and neoliberalism
All
transnational actors in development such as WB, EU, OSCE, UNDP advance state
education as a mechanism for social integration of the Roma, who are considered
to be the least integrated group in society. The question is whether the state
education is meant to accomplish empowerment and social integration of the Roma
in society or whether it can be used as a form of cultural domination and
disciplinarisation, produced by the state and neoliberalism (Bourdieu and
Passeron 1977). For instance for the case of Gypsy Travellers, but not only, social
integration is equated with social assimilation by state officials, part of a
civilising project which assumes that ‘the path to empowerment requires the
abandonment of cultural practices and values, impeding the individuation
process, which is the ultimate aim of assimilation’(Powell 2010: 489).
In
addition, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, state education is envisaged
as a mechanism of human development that can justify welfare state reduction. However,
social security is extremely important for a genuine social integration of most
of the Romanian Roma, who are unemployed and live in extreme poverty. After
almost 30 years of transition to capitalism, Romanian state has not
unfortunately succeeded to develop a security social system, eradicate extreme
poverty, sort out endemic corruption and create the bases for a developed
economy, which would be at least able to absorb the labour force migrating to
Western countries for much better paid working class jobs. As previously
showed, the two kinds of social benefits - guaranteed minimum wage and family
benefit - and likewise the minimum salary raise for 2019 promised by the
government are exclusively symbolic. Starting with 1st of January 2019,
after state taxation (a total of 45% including social and health taxes), minimum
salary in Romania is approximately 243 pounds per month[8]. Furthermore,
the government applies a unique tax to all salaries. In 2018, it decided to
reduce the unique income tax from 16% to 10% and remove the corporate tax for
businesses producing maximum 1 billion Euros per year[9],
losing a large amount of money from the budget, which had not previously been
considered suitable for public investments and establishing a genuine social
security system. The latter stands at the core of Western capitalism and its
stability and aims to rectify the social consequences produced by a highly
neoliberalised economy, which excludes the paupers and people with minimal
financial and social capital. In other words, Romanian state proves to endorse an
extreme form of neoliberalism, which sustains capital and nouveau riche and deprive
poor people of basic human rights such as food and housing, covered by a living
wage. Moreover, from my long term fieldwork observations many of the poor Roma
are imprisoned for petty theft by Romanian authorities. Therefore, as Wacquant (2003)
argues for the case of Black People in America, this sort of neoliberalism is a
liberal punitive system that advocates for liberalisation at the top, giving
more freedoms to businesses and upper classes and disciplinarisation of the poor through
repressive measures (imprisonment for
petty theft) at the bottom. Likewise, the Romanian state substitutes its
incapacity to offer poor Roma access to social security and living wage jobs
for state education that aims at their disciplinarisation and a repressive
judicial system, which harshly punishes the most excluded in society.
In
addition state education for the Roma, and other groups considered by the state
to be disadvantaged (including the Roma groups who experience poverty),
replicates the paradox of neoliberal governance, described by Bourdieu (1998)
as a mechanism that ‘tends on the whole to favour severing economy from social
realities and thereby constructing, in reality, an economic system conforming
to its description in pure theory’. State education is less valued in a capitalist
society that favours capital expansion, entrepreneurial abilities, social
networks and connections to the managerial class, which stand at the core of
neoliberalism. In the Romanian context, the paradox emerges from a visible
disconnection between educational programs for social integration of the Roma, the
realities of a deregulated labour market, unable to absorb the workforce, and a
neopatrimonial context which filters social and economic opportunities. Hence,
social integration of the propertyless Roma through formal education proposed
by neoliberalism proves to be an utopian project and a substitution of an
exclusionary state, which after almost 30 years of abrupt transition to
capitalism refuses to develop a social security system for the poor, living in
extreme housing conditions, and reduce state taxes for the lowest salaries in
the EU.
Nevertheless, neoliberalism and its disciplinary
methods, which work through its institutions (e.g. schools, workplaces etc.) can
be counter-balanced by Romani cultural understandings, productive of genuine
forms of self-governance (e.g. Kalderash) and active subjectivities, which
similar to those of Black People in the US, can organise Roma socially and
politically in a state that excludes them. To conclude, state education ceases
to become a form of cultural domination, as Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) suggested
and act as a genuine emancipatory project for different Roma groups as soon as it
is complemented with a dialogue with Romani forms of social and cultural
organisation and knowledge, which are sources of human action and idiosyncratic
mechanisms of self-governance.
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[1]
There are mainly two types
of social benefits in Romania: minimum guaranteed wage established in 2001 and
family support allowance. The guaranteed minimum wage is considered to be 500
RON/month equivalent to 100 pounds. The social support means that the applicant
should earn her/his own money and get the rest from the state. One working person
can get from the state 141.5 RON/month equivalent to 26.95 pounds/month as the
minimum guaranteed wage. In addition, a family with one child can get 82 RON/month
equivalent to 15.61 pounds/month as a family support allowance. See
S.Voiculescu (2018) ‘Ajutoare sociale 2018: Ce valori au si cine le poate primi
anul acesta.’ [Social Benefits 2018: What values they have and who can get them
this year], 12 January 2018. Available at https://avocatnet.ro/articol_47325/Ajutoare-sociale-2018-Ce-valori-au-%C8%99i-cine-le-poate-primi-anul-acesta.html
[2] Sedentary Romanian Roma have
been assimilated by previous political regimes, including socialist regime which transformed them into proletarians.
[3] Their businesses and trading
activities are performed informally, without paying taxes to the state. Therefore,
they cannot be considered official business activities, part of the capitalist
economy.
[5] See ‘Guvernul va incadra mediatori
scolari in toate unitatile cu elevi romi in raport de minim 15%’ [ The
Government will assign school mediators in all units attended by pupils in
relation to minimum 15% ], Social Department- Mediafax.ro, Bucharest, January
2015. Available at http://www.mediafax.ro/social/guvernul-va-incadra-mediatori-scolari-in-toate-unitatile-cu-elevi-romi-in-raport-de-minimum-15-13765432
[6] Diana is a young teacher who
constantly follows regional state training in education and social integration
of the Roma.
[7] Most of the Kalderash couples
are not officially married, which is not considered a common practice in
Romania. It can be partly explained by the reminiscences of the socialist state
culture, which used to stigmatise unofficial intimate relations as well as
divorce.
[8]
See Claudiu Zamfir (2019)
‘Salariul minim brut 2019, publicat in Monitorul Oficial. Cat va fi netul
primit de angajat?’ [ Minimum gross salary, published in Official Law Register.
How much will the get the employee after tax ?], 10 December 2018. Available
at: https://www.startupcafe.ro/taxe/salariu-minim-2019-monitorul-oficial-net-brut.htm.
[9]
See
Claudiu Zamfir (2018) ’LISTA 2018: Principalele taxe si impozite modificate
pentru firme, PFA, persoane fizice.’ [LIST 2018: Main taxes changed for
companies and self-employed businesses], 2nd January 2018. Available
at: https://www.startupcafe.ro/taxe/lista-2018-taxe-impozite-firme-pfa-persoane-fizice.htm
