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Round and Round the Roundabout: Czech Roma and the Vicious Circle of Asylum-seeking

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Mit'a Castle-Kanĕrová
Mit'a Castle-Kanĕrová*
Affiliation:
Prague, Czech Republic. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article follows earlier discussions about the current status of Romani refugees and migrants within Europe and the role of human rights in the process of accession of Central European states to the European Union (EU), in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Volume 13, Number 2. Romani migration opens up central issues of democratisation in Eastern Europe and of the role played by the EU in shaping that process. Human rights appear to have been accorded secondary importance and were replaced by the political doctrines of accession as efforts to manage and control migration, particularly of so-called undesirable migrants, such as the Roma, have reached a hiatus. The argument offered here is that discrimination of the Roma has been defined as no more than a social problem so that governments, both East and West, can proceed with the political agenda of enlargement. To demonstrate this point, the article reviews some Czech governmental documentation related to the treatment of Roma and places it within the context of the debate around accession within the broader framework of EU harmonisation of immigration policies.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 31 , Issue 1: Special Issue: “Romani Migrations: Strangers in Anybody's Land?” Further Reviewed , March 2003 , pp. 13 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

Notes

1. Sarah Collinson, Beyond Borders: West European Migration Policy Towards the 21st Century, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1993. Collinson explores, among other issues, the EU's changing security agenda in the post-Cold War era, when a new emotive language of “mass migration” and “threat” is being used.Google Scholar

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