BEGGING IN THE CONTEXT OF ROMANIAN ROMA MIGRATION

Abstract

The Roma have been an integral part of European identity and culture for centuries. With Romania's accession to the EU in 2007, the country's largest Roma community so far living in Europe gained the right to free movement. Roma migration soon after Romania's accession began to be perceived as a threat to social policies in the host countries. Security issues were linked to crime incriminated against Roma, the sources of which were seen as begging. As research and development of social policies show, the issue of begging has changed the approach to social problems and intra-EU migration. This article is an overview and is an attempt to outline the most important global trends and directions of research on the phenomenon of begging in the context of Romanian Roma migration to Poland and other selected EU countries. For this purpose, I discuss contemporary research on the definition of begging, showing that this activity should be understood as work and one of the basic human rights. I argue that this problem cannot be solved by criminalizing begging and tightening the controls on migration in EU member states. Such displacement policies only aim to export begging to other countries, without addressing the basic problem of survival of extreme poverty in society. Such activities violate the fundamental rights of Romanian Roma, ignoring socio-political solutions that can counteract poverty, racism and discrimination.