Invisible Edges of Citizenship: The Position of Romani Minorities after the ‘Refugee Crisis’

In October 2016, the Council of Europe’s Congress of Local and Regional Authorities published a report entitled The Situation of Roma and Travellers in the context of rising extremism, xenophobia and refugee crisis in Europe (CPL31(2016)03final). The report underlines the indirect consequences for the Europe’s Romani minorities in the aftermath of the so-called 2015/16 refugee crisis. While scrutinising this report, this paper investigates whether different actors highlighted the politics of diversity in connection to the position of Romani minorities especially in the countries that were located along the Western Balkan route between September 2015 and March 2016: Greece, The Republic of Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria and Germany. The paper presents, political, media and legal discourses concerning the politics of diversity, but it also includes the interviews with Romani individuals themselves, who were either active in the civil society while the Western Balkan route was open or were affected by its consequences. On the basis of this analysis, I argue that the ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe reconfirmed the invisible edges of citizenship that especially Roma (non-)citizens with precarious legal statuses are facing in Europe (stateless people, legally invisible persons, ‘failed’ asylum seekers, former refugees, etc.). While conceptualising invisible edges of citizenship, I claim that these do not manifestly target Roma, yet they end up disproportionally affected by them.