Abstract
The aim of this article is to contribute to the analysis of the structural racism and racialization that exists in Portugal against Roma people. Racialization takes place in various dimensions of life, but we will focus here on issues of schooling and education, which were accentuated during the COVID-19 pandemic and revealed a lack of social deprotection and inequalities between Roma and non-Roma students. This analysis, focusing on the impact on young people attending secondary education, is based on a qualitative study carried out in the Metropolitan Areas of Lisbon and Porto using data from three focus groups and in-depth interviews with 33 secondary school students. Several public policies currently cover the Roma/Ciganos, but social inequality persists in terms of basic subsistence conditions and civic participation, as well as in the form of structural racism, with little Roma participation in political life and the invisibility of representation. The situation has worsened exponentially due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the combination of “classic” forms of racism and discrimination and the new forms of exclusion that have also appeared. We argue that the implicit acceptance of poverty and marginalization among Roma people needs to be viewed as a component of the racialization and antigypsyism to which they are subjected, and this dimension needs to be further investigated by scientific agendas.
Highlights
Portuguese Roma are the biggest victims of racism in Portugal and of socio-economic vulnerability, constantly confronted with xenophobic, racist attitudes and hate speech by extreme right-wing political party members, as well as with hate comments on social networks
Despite the concern that European and Portuguese government authorities have shown over the past few years in relation to the inequalities in access to and exercise of citizenship by Roma people, there are still persistent problems of poverty and exclusion, and it is among these people that we find the most extreme cases of poverty, illiteracy and social discrimination (European Commission 2004; ERRC/NÚMENA 2007; FRA 2012)
Portugal decreed its first state of emergency in the pandemic scenario, covering six weeks in March and April, and face-to-face classes were stopped in mid-March, with the majority of Portuguese students not having returned to school in the academic year of
Summary
Portuguese Roma are the biggest victims of racism in Portugal and of socio-economic vulnerability, constantly confronted with xenophobic, racist attitudes and hate speech by extreme right-wing political party members, as well as with hate comments on social networks. The resurgence of racist narratives, which incite hatred towards Roma people, are offensive and humiliating, and legitimize structural and institutional inequalities, shows that throughout history, Roma have been one of the main targets of historically systematic and structural discrimination rooted in society and in the main institutions (Mendes 2007). These forms of everyday racism are deep-rooted in Portuguese society, manifesting in everyday situations and contexts in the lives of Roma people (Magano 2010) and frequently seen as trivial, “normal”. While we are experiencing a situation that embodies a threat to each and every one of us, worldwide, there are strong asymmetries in the way that the virus affects different social groups and how people deal with and manage these impacts
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