BARE PERIPHERIES: STATE RETRENCHMENT AND POPULATION PROFILING IN SEGREGATED ROMA SETTLEMENTS FROM ROMANIA
BARE PERIPHERIES: STATE RETRENCHMENT AND POPULATION PROFILING IN SEGREGATED ROMA SETTLEMENTS FROM ROMANIA

Summary/Abstract: The text aims to explore processes of state retrenchment in contemporary Romania, as endorsed by the historically embedded profiling of the Roma as a “distinct and subversive” population in conjunction with the racialization of extreme deprivation as a “Gypsy problem”, which ultimately led to the formation of “bare” (Agamben, 1998) peripheries where state policies merely exercise population control and citizenship is disentangled. Taking inspiration from Thorburn’s (2012) distinction between identification, surveillance and population profiling, it examines the adverse inclusion of the Roma in the course of civil identification, in the context of strong and historically enduring profiling of the Roma as a “category of suspicion” (G.T. Marx, 1985) and weak state capacity to exercise surveillance. These processes are depicted with the help of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with welfare workers, Roma counsellors and mediators in four Romanian cities: Cluj-Napoca, Miercurea Ciuc, Ploiești and Târgu-Mureș.

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