DEVELOPMENT, UNDERDEVELOPMENT AND IMPOVERISHED ROMA COMMUNITIES. A CASE STUDY OF HIGH-LEVEL VISIONS AND AGENDAS OF ECONOMIC PROGRESS IN URBAN ROMANIA
DEVELOPMENT, UNDERDEVELOPMENT AND IMPOVERISHED ROMA COMMUNITIES. A CASE STUDY OF HIGH-LEVEL VISIONS AND AGENDAS OF ECONOMIC PROGRESS IN URBAN ROMANIA

Summary/Abstract: This paper takes as a starting point the imaginaries guiding the development of the city and the labour market as they become visible in the discourses of some of the institutions producing policies at the level of municipalities. Relying on the multi-levelled ethnographic empirical material that was gathered within the SPAREX research project, this paper seeks to describe the ways in which the current hegemonic discourses of economic development (centred on attracting foreign investment to cities) and that of the neoliberal subject (the worthy entrepreneurial autonomous and creative individual) dovetail with the existing stereotypes of the ethnically Roma. It is a tentative explanation of the ways in which the particular nodal points of the dominant vision of development further creates the basis for the definition of certain actors and possible alternatives, excluding from the onset entire categories of people when attempting to manage and to better the life of the cities.

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