The question of Roma mediators and positive
discrimination
Ever since the events of summer 2010 in France Europe
is still divided by a wall. A while ago, a part of this wall was actually
physical – brick and mortar and concrete - but most of it is now invisible, yet
no less effective in maintaining a divide between Roma and the rest of our
societies. (…) These are the people who can help us to make a difference. They
are the most direct link between our standards and the reality on the ground”.
The discourse
presenting Roma mediators as the
antidote to the marginalisation of this minority in Europe
is one shared by numerous institutional stakeholders, non-governmental organisations,
Roma organisations, etc. Although this is the first time that there has been so
much talk of mediators, we should still remember that this is something that
has been going on for quite a long time Even back in the 1980s, Spain Romania Europe .
Although the word mediation has a precise meaning, we
need to take another look at both the use of the concept and its effects in
practice. An examination of the situation in the judeţ of Dolj in Romania
I/ An ambiguous concept
The definition given by the Council of Europe in the
“Guide for Roma school mediators/assistants”[3] is as follows: “Mediation is a process
originally associated with the resolution of conflict situations through the
intervention of a neutral third party: the mediator. The mediator participates
in the agreement or at the request of the parties to the conflict. The decision
resolving the conflict situation is made by the parties rather than the
mediator”. The two parties are expressly named in a diagram illustrating this
definition and they are the School on the one hand and the Roma community on
the other. The school mediator is described as a neutral party.
This definition stresses three essential points which
we come across again in most of the work done on the concept of mediation[4]:
-
the presence of
a latent or open conflict between two parties,
-
a request or an
agreement by these two parties to appoint a neutral mediator,
-
decisions taken
which lead to changes in both camps.
With regard to the first point, the conflict situation
between the Roma communities and the institution does not appear to be the only
explanation for their exclusion from the health system or students dropping out
of school. When I asked mediators about this point, the reasons mentioned had
more to do with poverty than any cultural mistrust of the school or health
service. In order of importance, the causes put forward were as follows:
-
the weakness of
the institutions’ modes of operation and the low salaries paid to members of
staff[5],
-
hostility from
part of the majority population towards the Roma,
-
prejudices
against the Roma on the part of certain professionals[7],
-
hostility from
some Roma parents towards the school (especially for girls).
The emphasis laid on mediation between the Roma
communities and the institutions boils down to working on the last two points
which sometimes turn out to be the consequences of the previous causes. This
means that this programme can only ever have a limited impact if is applied to
the letter.
As far as the question of the neutrality of the
mediator is concerned, there is no point lingering over it because, in
practice, irrespective of the individual project, it is almost impossible to
guarantee[8].
Finally, as far as the last condition - i.e. the decisions taken by both
parties which lead to changes - is concerned, apart from their behaviour,
values or culture, it is difficult to envisage that the Roma in question might
change, hence there is some question about the actual goal of this mediation.
The semantics which go hand-in-hand with this
programme do implicitly indicate that Roma culture is designated as the main
cause of the marginalisation of Roma communities. Against this background, Roma
mediators would thus have the job of encouraging these communities to make
cultural changes via school, health education or by learning about means of
contraception, etc. This conceptual window-dressing is no obstacle to the
achieving of positive results here and there; except that it does avoid any
questioning of the structural elements which led to the impoverishment of a
part of the Romanian population – both Roma and non-Roma. In this respect,
although this mediation has a tendency to make us overlook it, we need to
remember that not all of Romania’s Roma live on welfare and that there are
non-Roma Romanians who face poverty, children dropping out of school or
exclusion from the health system.
II / School mediators in Romania, the case of the judeţ
of Dolj
The profession of school mediator has been recognised
by and enshrined in law since 2007. Training[9]
lasting for around ten months is provided and there is a job description
clearly setting out their duties.
A study of this programme in the judeţ of Dolj will
give us a better idea of both the role of and the difficulties faced by
mediators. According to the 2002 census, the department has thirty-one thousand
three hundred and forty-four Roma inhabitants and ranks second in Romania in
terms of self-styled Roma population[10].
There are twelve school mediators covering this territory; four of them taken
on by the equivalent of the General Council (Consil Judeţan), two by the
communes and six by the school inspectorate (MECT). The coordination is handled
by the head of the CRAJE (Departmental Educational Resource Centre) in
accordance with the law which lays down the procedures for supervising mediators.
This body is funded by the department.
In theory the distribution of these mediators is based
upon the following criteria:
-
a written
request from the school stating its grounds,
-
the availability
of a mediator who can either be accepted by the local Roma community or is a
member of the community him or herself,
-
a study by the
school inspectorate designed to target the poorest communes.
As the last point is almost impossible to determine in
practice[11],
depending upon where the funding comes from (State, department or commune),
assignments are based upon a series of compromises between local stakeholders
such as the National Roma Agency (ANR), the departmental Roma offices (BJR),
Roma associations, the department, the town and city councils and the schools.
Even though it is difficult to combat issues of this kind which are inherent in
any project[12], the
main risk is that the mediators may get involved only in areas which are
already covered by many aid programmes…
The case of Gighera will help us gain a better
understanding of the discrepancies brought about by this method of selection.
This commune in the south of the department, in which Roma account for twenty
per cent of the population, had its school closed for a year and a half due to
renovation work. Pending the end of the works, the children were sent to the
school in a neighbouring village, which was four to eight km away depending
upon exactly where they lived. The lack of school transport and the great
poverty in which both the majority of the Roma and many of the non-Roma
families live led to a record rate of absenteeism. Even so, neither the
village’s school nor that of the neighbouring village made any attempt to apply
to the authorities for a mediator. Their reasons were to do with the complexity
of the administrative procedures and a lack of confidence in the chances of
bringing the matter to a successful conclusion. All that would have been
required in order to avoid this situation was the assigning of mediators
according to the rate at which children were dropping out of school. However,
although this is the mediators’ main task, this rate is not taken into account.
I was given a simple reason for this, which is that official statistics are
very often false. A reading of the pupils’ attendance registers confirms this
information; very few children from Gighera were reported as absent. In fact,
some of them were even recorded as having very good attendance records and
being allowed to move up to the next year in spite of the fact that they had
been living in France for a number of years. So this is not a case of
negligence but rather a strategy which consists of hiding the number of
children who are dropping out of school. Indeed, in order to avoid classes
being cancelled and thus the loss of teaching jobs, the official figures which
the schools send to the Ministry often have only a distant relationship with
reality. The stand-by agreement signed between the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) and Romania in 2009 may have something to do with this because, as one of
the conditions for the loan, more than fifteen thousand teachers have to be
dismissed[13].
In order to guard against the lack of any credible
diagnosis about the school drop-out rate, the authorities, aware of this
problem, included numerous tasks dedicated to the drawing up of statistics in
the mediator’s job description (here are a few extracts from them):
-
Recording (monitorizeaza) the number of primary
schoolchildren from the community who do not go to school,
-
Recording the
number of secondary schoolchildren who have never been registered at school,
-
Gathering
relevant data in order to be able to record the number of children who access
education,
-
Updating the
database of pupils who are about to drop out of school, etc.
As I moved ahead with my research, I noticed that,
depending upon the participants, the school mediation programme responded to
precise, distinct interests buried beneath the issue of preventing children
from dropping out of school.
-
The Romanian
government believes that taking on a large number of mediators and having them
supervised by the law is a way of proving the authorities’ goodwill in
attempting to integrate but above all to identify the number of Roma in Romania
to the European Commission, the Council of Europe and certain member countries[14],
-
As we saw a
moment ago, the Ministry of Education believes that it is a matter of getting a
better grasp of what is actually happening in terms of children dropping out of
school, especially for the Roma minority[15]
and of proceeding to carry out certain checks on the information sent in by the
schools,
-
For the school,
the main role played by mediators lies in avoiding conflicts both between Roma
and non-Roma children and between teachers and the parents of Roma pupils,
-
Many Roma
organisations (whether they are associations or institutional organisations)
feel that the emphasis placed upon the need for a knowledge of Romani or even
to belong to the Roma minority reinforces the idea that Roma organisations are
key intermediaries and the best interfaces in order to deal with this minority.
This situation, set against a background of competition for access to grants,
is a guarantee of financial stability and power[16],
-
Finally, for
certain more general-interest non-governmental organisations, often formed and
financed in the 1990s using the methods employed in the English-speaking world,
mediators match the ideal of community development, i.e. training the leaders
who are supposed to act as role models and interfaces with the outside world.
3/ What the participants say
Against this background in which multiple interests
come face-to-face, how do school mediators see their work? The following
synthesis is the result of interviews and discussions with mediators and
coordinators.
With regard to their status, the mediators see the
official recognition of their profession by the Ministry of Education as
progress. Their training was often a time in their lives which they
particularly enjoyed and, in addition to this, after years of uncertainty and
fixed-term contracts, the events of summer 2010 appear to have led to jobs
being made permanent and additional staff being taken on.
In spite of these improvements, many see their
positions as a genuine handicap. The cause of the problem lies in the lack of
consideration of their actual level of study. Indeed, their profession calls
upon an intermediate level of qualification which matches the end of secondary
school. However, the majority of the mediators we spoke to had university
degrees. They say that this situation is responsible for a lack of
consideration by teachers who see them more as people who are there to keep an
eye on the Roma children than as colleagues. This lack of prestige at school
has a tendency to reduce their standing in the community and is sometimes used
as an example not to be followed. Some Roma parents, who are reluctant to send
their children to school, seeing that graduate mediators are employed doing
little more than odd jobs, feel that this strengthens their position that there
is no point in studying. In order to avoid losing their credibility, they
actually carefully hide how much they are paid, which is the minimum wage, i.e.
one hundred and twenty euros per month. In the department of Dolj, in order to
increase the number of positions, the judeţan council has chosen to recruit
part-time mediators at a wage of sixty euros per month! Even though a lot of
them say that they signed on in order to help their own community, it is
obvious that eventually the low salaries will have an impact on both motivation
and attendance.
Now let us look at how they see their main task, which
is to prevent children from dropping out of school. Although some of them do
highlight the fact that they have managed to register a hundred pupils,
overall, they feel relatively impotent on this question for three reasons:
-
it is difficult
for them to persuade families who do not have the money to buy clothes and
other items for school,
-
they do not have
any binding legislation allowing them to put any pressure on parents who refuse
to send their children to school,
-
They are
powerless in the face of the parents’ migrations, when they leave the little
ones with the older children who are thus forced to give up going to school.
Even so, they do not feel that their work is a waste
of time and often throw themselves into other fields which they deem to be
important for the community. At departmental level, the coordinators explain
that mediators have helped provide a greater awareness of the families’ actual
circumstances. A lot of them have introduced extracurricular activities such as
setting up folk groups and have developed all kinds of projects. In fact, in
order to win back prestige (and also to augment their incomes) some of them get
involved locally in order to improve the situation in the commune. This may
range from the conveyance of water to the building of infrastructures or the
development of local economic activities.
As far as the question of belonging to a community or
ethnic group, which is claimed to be necessary by some Roma organisations, is
concerned, the usefulness of this approach in terms of influence appears to be
ambivalent, to say the least. There are some Roma mediators (although fewer
than a quarter of those we spoke to) who enjoy significant recognition within
their groups and who have very considerable influence as a result. For the
others, in addition to the previously mentioned problem of the image of the
Roma mediator often being a negative one due to the way s/he is treated at the
school, there are other aspects to be taken into account. Although among the
most traditional groups, cultural or ethnic proximity needs to be considered as
a decisive asset, this is not the case. Indeed, because they belong to other
groups, because they have been educated or because they have married late, the
mediators are seen as Roma who have abandoned the traditions. “They say that we’re “kaćtale”, so they refuse to listen to us".
In actual fact, these groups consider them to be Roma from “deviant” families
hence there is enormous mistrust from certain quarters - and in some cases even
a refusal to mix with them. In these situations, a mediator who is Romanian or
belongs to another minority would find it easier to be accepted because the
issues are not of the same kind. Indeed, these groups take up positive or
negative positions in relation to other Roma rather than in opposition to the gadjé[17].
If the mediator were not Roma, they would be less concerned about him or her
having a good or bad influence on their offspring.
Conclusion
When we ask both mediators and the people responsible
for this programme about their recommendations they all stress three points:
-
the need to
increase human resources,
-
the need to
improve status and pay,
-
the need to
provide training which takes into consideration the intercultural aspects
between Roma and non-Roma people and the issue of migration.
Although everyone agrees that this programme is a step
forward for deprived groups, the point which appears to be most problematic is
that of the ethnicisation of social problems. Indeed, the more projects are set
up aimed solely at the Roma, the more currency this gives to the idea that the
Roma are a social problem by their very nature. As we have seen, many mediators
who are looking to improve the situation locally set up projects for the whole
of their communes or neighbourhoods and do not simply restrict themselves to
helping a specific group. Like anyone else, the Roma face a socio-economic
situation which leads to similar social difficulties. In the judeţ of Dolj,
according to information gathered by the mediators, twenty-one per cent of all
pupils who drop out of school are allegedly Roma. It is true that this minority
is overrepresented compared to the rest of the population but this means that
the issue is not limited to a particular group. We could offer numerous
examples on questions of children who have stayed at home while their parents
are working abroad or difficulties in accessing the health system which have
just as much of an impact upon Romanians.
Any attempt to designate a group according to its
supposedly different – or even incompatible - cultural origins brings with it a
number of dangers. Obviously this brings to mind nationalism and certain forms
of populism and it also drives the designated group to retreat into its own
identity. Even though the vast majority of Roma do not have any feelings of
belonging to a transnational minority, the mediators are coming across an
increasing number of situations involving children who do not speak Romanian
very well. This is a relatively new phenomenon and demonstrates a sense of
isolation from wider society. The use of school or health mediators does
involve a risk of seeing the Roma treated as foreigners in their own country.
In discussions, a number of professionals have complained about the fact that
teachers no longer wish to meet the parents of Roma pupils, under the pretext
that this is the mediator’s job. There are similar cases with doctors who prefer
to refer their Roma patients to health mediators, and this practice can also be
used on a political level. During the negotiations for the European action plan
for the integration of the Roma of 20th October 2010, Romania had a
provision adopted which states that, after spending three months residing in a
Member State it is up to the host country to implement a full set of measures
for their “integration”. Although this notion can be interpreted as a reminder
of the rights linked to the European citizenship of Romanian Roma, it
strengthens the image of the Roma as a stateless extra-European minority
without ties.
The assertion of the right to education, the right to
health and the specific measures which go with them appear to be the healthiest
basis for preventing children from dropping out of school and exclusion from
the health system. The mediators, whilst retaining their duties, fight to help
prevent children from dropping out of school or to help them access healthcare,
and without abandoning their main asset, which is a good knowledge of groups in
difficulties, could become social
workers. Rather than being oriented towards particular groups because of their
ethnic or cultural backgrounds, they would end up working with all sections of
the population who are in difficulties. The Roma problem would then fade away
leaving us with social questions…
Bibliography
DIMINESCU D, Visibles
mais peu nombreux, les circulations migratoires roumaines, published by
Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 2003, Paris.
GRIGORE D, Evaluare politicilor
publice educationale pentru rromi, published by Alpha Mdn, Bucharest, 2009.
GUILLAUME-HOFNUNG
M, Le concept de la médiation et
l’urgence théorique, Cahier du Cremoc no. 35
LITS G, Tiers et objectivité sociale chez Georg
Simmel, Revue Émulations no. 5, Brussels 2009
NACU A Un double langage : les usages du « politiquement correct » dans les
programmes destinés aux Roms en Roumanie et en Bulgarie, Revue d’Études
Tsiganes no. 38
OLIVIER
DE SARDAN J-P, Anthropologie et
développement, published by Apad Karthala, Paris, 1998.
OLIVERA M, Romanes, on l’intégration traditionnelle des
Gabori de Transylvanie, ethnology doctoral thesis, Université Paris X, 2007
PORUMB A, (et al), Review of Donor Support for the
NGO Sector in Romania, Princess Margarita Romanian Foundation, Bucharest
RUS C, La
formation des assistants et médiateurs scolaires roms/tsiganes, Report on the
Timsoara seminar, April 2004.
RUS C, La
situation des médiateurs et assistants scolaires roms en Europe, Report for the
Council of Europe, 2006
RUS C and ZAETRAN M, Education of
Roma children in Europe – Guide for Roma mediators / assistants, published
by Council of Europe. 2009.
USAID, NGO Sustainability Index for Central and Eastern Europe and
Eurasia, 13th Edition – June 2010.
[2] Interviews with mediators in
the județ of Dolj, coordinators and Messrs G. Gheorghe and S. Ion from the association.
[3] Education of Roma children in Europe – Guide
for Roma mediators / assistants. Published by the Council of Europe. 2009 http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/education/roma/Source/Guide_FR.PDF
[4] Le concept de la médiation et l’urgence
théorique (The Concept of Mediation and Theoretical Urgency) by Michèle
Guillaume-Hofnung, Cahier du Cremoc no. 35
[5] In addition to a certain lack of motivation
among supervisory staff this leads - especially in the health system – to
widespread corruption which means that although the system is free of charge in
theory, in practice, the poorest people do not have access to it. A 2004 World
Bank study revealed that corruption in the Romanian health system cost 300 million
euros per year.
[6] Mediators in the department of Dolj emphasise
that the main cause of children’s failure to attend primary school is the fact
that their parents do not have enough money to buy the necessary clothes and
other items.
[7] In the case of health mediators this cause
comes ahead of the hostility of the majority population.
[8] It is hard to imagine a third party paid by an
institution which is totally independent of the two parties who are in
conflict.
[9] Almost 800 school mediators were trained in the
period from the 1990s up until 2010. The curriculum is currently handled by
three main bodies over a period ranging from 8 to 10 months with relatively
similar modules.
[10] See Mr Olivera’s article “Introduction aux
formes et raisons de la diversité rom roumaine" (Introduction to the Forms
of and Reasons for Romanian Rom Diversity), in Études Tsiganes no. 38
[11] any
income from migrants who send money back to their families is almost never
declared, and nor are many paid activities for which there are no invoices.
[12] “Even overlooking its contacts with the
population, a project is thus already a partly incoherent whole because it has
disparate coherences” J-P Olivier de Sardan, Anthropologie et développement
(Anthropology and Development), published by Apad Karthala, Paris, 1998, p 130
(221 p)
[13] “letterRomaniangovernmentin 2010at leastin 2011afteralreadysince the start of the year”. Taken from the French
Embassy in Bucharest’s press review dated 5th August 2010.
[14] The declaration acknowledges that the “challenges”
posed by the situation of the Roma have “cross-border implications and thus
call for a Pan-European response”. Even so, it underlines that it is “the
Member States of which the Roma are nationals or in which they reside legally
on a long-term basis who have primary responsibility for their social
integration”. Extract
from the Council of Europe’s Strasbourg declaration after the adoption of the
European Action Plan for the Integration of the Roma on 20th October
2010.
[15] Article 9 of chapter 3 of order 1539 of 19th
July 2007 issued by the MECT (the Romanian Ministry of Education) defines the
duties of school mediators. Among the fifteen or so points mentioned, more than
a third relate to the gathering of data about the situation of the children of
the Roma community.
[16] The difficulties encountered by NGOs are linked
to the recession which Romania has been going through since 2009. In addition to this,
for historical reasons, the Romanian social services are often reluctant to
entrust certain kinds of work to NGOs. The 2009 USAID report on the situation
of NGOs in Romania shows that this tendency develops over the years. If we look
at the services provided by NGOs, in 2006 they accounted for two-thirds, in
2009 they were estimated at 50%. On the other hand, and again according to the
same report, services to the Roma are provided almost exclusively by NGOs. http://www.usaid.gov/locations/europe_eurasia/dem_gov/ngoindex/2009/complete_document.pdf
[17] M. Olivera “Romanes, on l’intégration
traditionnelle des Gabori de Transylvanie, thèse de doctorat en
ethnologie" (Translator’s note:
I assume the meaning here is: “Romanians, or the Traditional Integration of the
Gabori of Transylvania, ethnology doctoral thesis”) Université Paris X, 2007
