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Pod, the settlement near the refuse site where I conducted ethnographic research with poor Roma, represents the materialization of the gap between legal and actual citizenship: the space, erased from official maps, where Roma with legal Romanian citizenship are de facto non-citizens and experience a complete failure of their citizenship rights. I see the spatial reality of the citizenship gap as a variation of Giorgio Agamben’s (1998) camp. The camp, according to Agamben, is where refugees live as non-citizens, a place for zoe or ‘bare life.’ From the state’s point of view, Pod has been reduced to a gap; however, my ethnographic research brings into focus the subjectivities of Pod’s inhabitants – not unlike Sigona (2015), who uses the term ‘campenization’ to discuss the status of Roma living in camps in Italy (see also Sigona and Trehan 2009; Hepworth 2015).

This book shows how neoliberal economic policies – including large cuts in social security, the disappearance of low-skilled jobs and work opportunities for Roma, and evictions from formerly nationalized properties that were returned to their owners after 1989 – have disproportionately affected Roma. I discuss everyday experiences of the citizenship gap for Roma from Pod, such as the enrolment of Roma children in a school for children with learning disabilities, and mistreatment by the police; I also discuss how Roma in Pod have resisted the citizenship gap through dance performances and their own claims to belong in Romania. Pod and other similar places, contrary to media representations, are connected to Romanian society through a series of informal networks of relatives, acquaintances and new arrivals. Pod residents express these affective ties to Romania when they speak of ‘our country, Romania’, ‘our politicians’ and ‘our language’, the latter sometimes being Romani and sometimes Romanian. Their views on belonging echo those expressed by prominent Roma activists, whose strategies in the media and cultural events aim to raise public awareness about Roma history and Roma contributions to culture and society.

Using ethnographic evidence from Pod and elsewhere, I show that Roma continue to be racialized on the basis of external markers, a process that perpetuates the citizenship gap for Roma.¹³ Throughout this book, I treat Roma as an ethnicity, as no immutable signs mark one as Ţigan/Ţigancă or Roma, despite widespread misconceptions that all Roma are dark skinned, for example.¹⁴ I also focus on racialization processes: while ‘race’ as a classificatory term is a social construction which masquerades as truth and uses biology to do so, it is an important term that captures the reality of racism, which Roma continue to experience. Through performative processes of gendered and classed racialization and misrecognition, Roma fail to access actual citizenship, either materially or symbolically. Roma who are unmarked may pass as the majority, their Roma ethnicity erased, while Roma values are appropriated by the ethnic nation;¹⁵ others fail to pass – for example, Roma in Pod are classified as abject Ţigani, while Roma musicians and performers are seen as exotic Ţigani. Paraphrasing Stuart Hall (1980), I argue that poor Roma in Romania experience their class as race and are racialized into Ţigani.¹⁶ Some Roma are able to escape the racialization of poverty in some contexts but not in others (see Emigh and Szelényi 2000; Stewart 2002; Ladányi and Szelényi 2006).¹⁷ I show the limits of the relative fluidity in the racialization of Roma; and I argue that the markers of class can include an association with a specific location, such as Pod, in addition to external markers of low socioeconomic status, such as clothing and overall appearance or darker skin tone.