Abject citizens: Italian ‘Nomad Emergencies’ and the deportability of Romanian Roma

Abstract

In May 2008, Berlusconi's newly elected coalition introduced new measures to facilitate the expulsion and repatriation of European community citizens, simultaneously declaring a ‘State of Emergency with regards to the Settlement of Nomadic Communities in Lazio, Campania and Lombardy Regions’. Through an analysis of these laws and their material effects, this article will show how they constituted Romanian Roma as abject European citizens. In the process, it will argue that this process of abjection was dependent on earlier processes that first categorised the Roma as ‘nomads’ and relegated them to the abject space of the ‘nomad camp’. The article will conclude by arguing that the constitution of the Roma as abject citizens does not only occur through the act of expulsion, but through the condition of deportability induced by the threat of expulsion.