The Roma who stop roaming: integration or marginalisation?

TheThe rue de la Montagne-Pierreuse is a rough, potholed street that leads out of a vast industrial estate in Haut-Montreuil, a district in the suburb of Montreuil, east of Paris. It eventually reaches a fenced-off plot of land where 60 caravans are parked in perfect lines.

This concrete-covered site is the latest and largest of the reinsertion camps for Roma established around the Greater Paris Region (Ile-de-France). It is home to 185 people, including 70 children, all of them Romanian.

Private guards check all those who enter, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Roma who live here can come and go as they please. But outsiders, who are asked to present identity papers, can only enter during visiting hours; 3pm to 6pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays only.

The families are taking part in a pilot project, set-up by the Montreuil town hall and the administration of the local Seine-Saint-Denis département (county), to provide the Roma with emergency housing and social assistance. When they arrived in January, all of them had to sign a contract under which they agreed to send their children to school, to learn the French language, to seek employment and to adhere to the rules and regulations of the site. In exchange, they were provided with a caravan, loaned by the Abbé-Pierre foundation, an independent charitable organisation active in alleviating the conditions of those living in poverty.

"What we are concerned with is absorbing the district's shanty town populations, to stabilize and protect them so that they don't remain constantly prone to expulsion," says Fabien Charbuillet, assistant to Dominique Voynet, mayor of Montreuil, and veteran leading figure of the opposition Green party.

There are five other rehabilitation sites in the suburbs around Paris, in Aubervilliers (the first to open, in 2006), Montreuil, Bagnolet, Saint-Denis and Saint-Ouen (see map). As in Montreuil, they are all conceived as a half-way point between the shanty town and traditional accommodation. Similar projects are under consideration in the cities of Lille, Marseille and Lyon. "We think that the problem of housing the Roma population would be resolved if we created another 20 villages in the Ile-de-France," comments Florence Haye, deputy to the mayor of Saint-Denis, another suburb north of the capital. But while local politicians in the suburbs are largely united in believing the villages serve a useful purpose, social workers are among those who have questioned their ultimate results.

Firstly, it's the principle of selection that upsets people. In Saint-Denis, 21 families (a total of 90 people) were chosen to enter the reinsertion 'village', out of a total of 600 applicants. The selection criteria were set by the local authority: police records, the head of the family's job back in Romania, their means of existence in France, whether the children have been to school, number of young children. Social workers judged the ambitions and motivations of the applicants to filter the demand.

And yet this pilot project was originally offered as a solution for the Roma of the rue Campra, whose large shanty town was dismantled in 2007 after a fatal fire. The result was that at the end of 2007, the 21 chosen families moved into caravans parked below the Fort de l'Est, in the run-down neighbourhood of Francs-Moisins, while the others were either deported back to Romania or returned to shanty towns or squats. A clean break was made and has since separated the people judged to be apt for reinsertion and the others, the majority, who will not be given that opportunity.

Even the chosen ones are still not home and dry. The contracts can be torn up and the families asked to leave. As such, these are trial residents.

Only Montreuil has chosen not to use selection. It housed all the Roma who had lived in the old squat on the rue Dombasle, which was also damaged by fire in 2008. "The MOUS [a team that groups together the State, local authorities and council housing administrators on projects for housing the most underprivileged] that Montreuil has set up looks after a total of 350 Roma," explains Fabien Charbuillet. "It is the largest in the region. The town hall believes it is facing up to its responsibilities in devoting a million euros a year to make it work. It can't do more than this."

But the expulsions of Roma during the summer have revealed the other Roma of Montreuil - those who live in shanty towns or squat in slums, of whom there are estimated to be 300 living in the district.

"They don’t need education in hygiene"

"The reinsertion villages are semi-internment camps," says Pierre Chopinaud, member of Voix des Roms, (Voice of the Roma), an association that defends Roma populations in France. "They are enclosed and guarded, and the residents haven't got the basic right to invite people to their homes."

The association, which manages a blog especially devoted to the rehabilitation villages, strongly condemns these measures, which it says reveal an obsession with security. "The real purpose of these projects is control and surveillance of a section of the immigrant Roma," wrote its president, Saimir Mile, in a post entitled 'Speak now or forever hold your tongue'.

The Association Logement Jeune Seine-Saint-Denis (ALJ 93), a charitable association that runs the Montagne-Pierreuse site, describes the security agent as "a steward", not a guard. "He is there to guarantee the safety of the people that live here," explains Nabil Bendami, head of economic development for the ALJ. "We must avoid other families moving in or other people imposing their law here."

The Roma themselves tend to put these restrictions into perspective, recalling the extreme precariousness of their lives before. Among the residents of the Montreuil village, some complain, for example, that visits are not possible at weekends, only during the week. Luminata Lakatos, a young mother of two, points at the trees and high grass of the neighbouring wasteland: "We don't know what animals could come from there. The fence protects us," she says. Since her arrival in France eight years ago, she has moved accommodation eight or nine times. For her, "it's good that this is a closed place, the village can't cope with more people."

In the town of Aubervilliers, the rules are stricter. The steward surveys the village's comings and goings via a camera installed above the entrance gate. He is under orders not to let anyone but the residents inside. Georji Stoynev, 36, lived in this group of prefabs for two and a half years. "My wife and I shared a 12m2 room with two other people," he remembers. "Cohabitation was very hard. But what annoyed me a bit were the rules. One day my brother, who lived in Marseille, decided to come up to Paris to see me. He couldn't come in and had to stay outside. That isn't right, and I don't really understand why it's like that."

"No evaluation"

The 'village' of the rue Pierre-de-Montreuil, in Montreuil, stands out from the others. On a scrappy piece of land surrounded by a green fence, 80 Roma live in ageing caravans and the gate is always open.

On rainy days in this village, the brooms come out. The women are constantly cleaning around their caravans, sweeping the earth and the pieces of lino they have thrown across the ground.

These Roma, housed by the Montreuil MOUS, are assisted by a charity called 'Rues et cités'. "These people don't need rules to make them keep their homes and the communal areas clean," says Claire Nicolas, the charity's director. They don't need education in hygiene. They keep places clean as long as they can pay for cleaning products."

She warns of the possible slide towards social control and moral hygiene, such as in 2009, when Montreuil council changed its tack, putting all functions of the Haut-Montreuil site in the hands of ALJ 93. "We are social workers, not lessors," she explains. "We don't want to mix housing management and social assistance like at some of the other camps. We help the families get back on their feet, we don't want to have a controlling or punitive role."

Other questions are raised over the ghetto-effect on single village communities. "Today these villages are aimed at an ethnic population, but if they are proved to work, we don't see why they cannot be mixed," says Michèle Mézard, a coordinator for the collective Romeurope, which brings together several charities such as Médecins du monde, the French human rights' league (Ligue des droits de l'homme), and Amnesty International. "We are also worried about the isolation of these villages," she adds. Because of financial pressure and the high value of land, these villages are often placed outside established communities, such as on industrial wasteland.

Aurélie Ratisson, a coordinator for the Catholic charitable association 'Secours catholique' in Seine-Saint-Denis, says: "These villages are confining structures. I think it's important to break this dynamic and to bring the Roma closer to the rest of the city. In Saint-Ouen, the classes we run to help Roma children with their schoolwork don't take place on the site, but in the local community hall."

Michèle Mezard warns: "The reinsertion village is seen by local government today as a model approach for bringing Roma into the community, but no overall evaluation has been done."

A vicious circle that results in begging

At the Montagne-Pierreuse site, a strategy for helping people get back to work has begun. The site's social workers held interviews with all the adults in a small prefab to assess their skills and experience. "Most of them were agricultural or manual workers in Romania," said one. "They have a lot of skills, they are resourceful and willing."

Despite every new hurdle, Luminata Lakatos, from the Montreuil village, has kept a twinkle in her eye and a generous smile. "I've been a cleaner, I've sold newspapers in the street, which is almost like begging," she recounts. "At the moment I'm out of work but I hoping I'll find something. I don't mind what job it is."

In contrast, the older men around her show signs of fatigue and discouragement. Daniel, 30 with two children, has lived in France for ten years. A month ago he asked for a resident's permit because he had a promise of work in the building industry. "I just hope get my work permit soon", he says.

Although Romania and Bulgaria joined the European Union in 2007, their nationals are subject to provisionally restricted rights regarding free movement and residence in other EU states. To apply for a resident's permit, they must first have a promise of work and apply for a work permit from the administrative offices of the local département. An employer who employs them full-time must pay a tax of at least 900 euros to the OFII (French Office of Immigration and Integration).

"It really puts a freeze on hiring", says Marie-Louise Mouket, project director at the ALJ. These restrictions result in many Roma finding illegal work, or taking up begging. "Some Roma pay the OFII tax for their bosses: they accept that it will be deducted from their first salary", explains Benjamin Lefeuvre, adult education teacher at the Montreuil site.

Nevertheless, the organisation claims positive results have been achieved by several reinsertion villages, including that of Bagnolet. Opened on August 1st 2008, its two-storey prefab containers provide shelter for just under 80 Bulgarian Roma. "Residence permits have been obtained by 80% of the population, and two couples including one with children have now gone into normal housing and are soon to be joined by two single people."

In the Saint-Denis reinsertion village, the results are more mitigated. In 2009, the site was completely reorganised. Hard constructions with wooden cladding have replaced caravans. The little houses surrounded by flowers have each been given a kitchen and bathroom. Plants are starting to grow on the high walls that enclose the village. "No family has yet left the Fort de l'Est village," explains Florence Daugert, a director of Adoma, the organisation that rebuilt the site. "Our priority was health. Then we worked on language learning because 70% of the people didn't speak any French. Today, there are literacy classes four times a week."

But while the local authorities in Seine-Saint-Denis actively support integration of the Roma by paying part of the regular costs of the reinsertion villages, the French government continues to restrict access to employment by opting to maintain the transitional movement and residence measures for Bulgarians and Romanians until 2013.

Coming next in this five-part report: The story of Luminata

English version: Alison Culliford