Academic Huub van Baar has found Romani people succeed on the labor market when given a chance

According to Huub van Baar, an Assistant Professor of Political Theory at the University of Giessen in Germany, Romani people are very successful when given a chance to apply themselves on the labor market. He demonstrates this through the example of Romani people from Slovakia who have emigrated to Great Britain.

“Villages and Romani communities are drawing enormous advantages from Romani migration. Their housing has improved and their education is of a higher quality,” the scholar told ROMEA TV during an international conference in Prague focused on the social and spatial mobilities and migrations of Romani people since 1945.

“I believe many Romani people migrate because they want to create better living conditions for themselves. They may want to live someplace where there is no racism. Nevertheless, most of them migrate for the purpose of acquiring better socioeconomic conditions,” he said, adding that he believes populism and racism are dangerous phenomena that must be addressed.

Brexit will increase labor force abuses among immigrants to Great Britain, according to the researcher. “I don’t believe migrants will have a big chance to improve their living standards [after Brexit]. Most probably some will return to their home countries because they will not be able to continue to live in the same conditions [in Britain after Brexit]. Some who have employment contracts will have to return to their home countries because those contracts will be cancelled. Some may remain, but they will no longer have formal employment contracts, and they will therefore continue to be exploited for their labor,” he told ROMEA TV.

The conference took place in mid-September in Prague and was intended to contribute new insight into the subject of Romani mobilities from diverse perspectives in the context of European societal change. As many as 20 academics both from abroad and from the Czech Republic presented the findings of their research and their experiences of both field work and historically-based studies.

The analyses presented were about the intrastate mobility of Romani people, which has very often been influenced by the political regimes of states; different migration strategies undertaken by Romani people for survival; and the question of loss of identity versus the so-called hyper-visibility of Romani people in society. The conference was organized by the Prague Forum for Romani Histories at the Institute of Contemporary History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in collaboration with the Romani Studies Seminar at the Department of Central European Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University.