Editorial: Special Issue - 'Roma Integration in the UK'

Anti-Roma sentiment, or “Romaphobia”, has been on the increase across Europe in recent years alongside a growing anti-immigration discourse. So much so that the Roma ‘are now seen as a “European problem” rather than a “European minority”‘ (Van Baar, 2011). Though far from a new phenomenon (see Lucassen et al., 1998; Mayall, 2004; Matras, 2014), repressive and controlling policies of dispersal and/or containment have emerged alongside the increased migration of Roma from Central and Eastern Europe to Western Europe (Vincze and Rat, 2013). At the same time the Roma have been the target of right-wing groups and political parties across Europe seeking to realise ‘old nationalist ambitions’ (Fox and Vermeersch, 2010). Such developments are not confined to Central and Eastern Europe however, as the illegal expulsion of Roma from France in 2010 and the well-documented treatment of the Roma in Italy illustrate (O’Nions, 2011; Picker, 2010).