Spatial consequences of urban policies Forming a Roma ghetto

Abstract

The article is based on ethnographic fieldwork in a neighborhood situated at the edge of a small town inhabited by the local poor for decades. The neighbourhood that was once connected to the town through a set of institutions has become isolated over the years as personal relationships and institutions have ceased. I intend to present the institutional changes and social processes that transformed a socially and ethnically heterogeneous neighbourhood into a stigmatized ghetto. In this process, the role of different organizations that structure the life of the urban poor, and the governance structures in which those organizations are embedded are fundamental. Overall, the penalization of poverty and criminalization of ethnicity characterize the mechanisms that maintain invisibility. These are as follows: (1) limiting their right to access certain institutions through the creation of a second set of institutions, particularly in education; (2) operating a public work scheme along ethnic divisions; and (3) surveillance of space used by the local Roma minority government to organize, monitor and regulate this neighbourhood. Keywords: social and spatial segregation, stigmatized ghetto, Roma, urban policy