Roma are not a social project. We became one — like laboratory mice, observed, measured, categorized, experimented on. In many parts of Europe, our presence predates the modern states that now design strategies about how to include us. We did not appear as a problem to be solved. The so-called “Roma question” was constructed from outside. We do not usually ask such questions about ourselves, so this question was never mine. Therefore the answers offered to me are not very interesting.
For decades the language has shifted — assimilation, then integration. Between those polished words stands the reality most Roma know too well: segregation. Often when forced assimilation failed, segregation followed. Today “integration” is presented as progress, but the logic underneath has not changed. You cannot assimilate an ethnicity with its own language, culture, internal codes, and centuries of continuity. Pressure can be applied to individuals. Media can highlight the “successful” Roma with careers while showing others in settlements as proof of failure. To me, that is propaganda — dividing us into “good Roma” and “bad Roma,” ambitious and lazy, integrated and failed.
We need to be freed from the labels of “assimilated” or “non-assimilated,” “integrated” or “non-integrated,” “problematic” or “non-problematic” — not reduced to a problem or a category. We may have different values or ways of living, but we are no less equal than anyone else.
We never asked to be “integrated.” That is not our mindset. We never asked for charity. We asked for dignity.
We never asked for secondhand clothes, nor for mercy or pity.
We never asked to be managed by projects or sustained by handouts. We asked for work — simple jobs, fair opportunities, and the dignity of not being turned away.
That is our integration, even if we do not call it that.
Governments speak about integration, yet rarely begin with responsibility. Roma across Europe were targets of systematic genocide, persecution, forced sterilizations, child removals, and open racial laws. In communist countries, the nomadic way of life was outlawed. Mobility — once a strategy of survival — was criminalized. Communities were forcibly settled, often in segregated areas without infrastructure. That was the beginning of many of the social problems used today as evidence of our “failure.” When you paralyze a community for generations, then blame it for not moving fast enough, that is not policy. That is historical amnesia.
Roma were self-sufficient long before welfare systems existed. We survived through trades, seasonal work, craftsmanship, music, metalwork, horse dealing, repair work — whatever allowed independence. We were never strangers to poverty, but poverty was not our identity. We were never victims of housing discrimination in the way policy papers describe it — we always found a roof, even if we built it ourselves. We were never victims of poverty — we lived through it.
The idea that we are a permanent social burden is convenient fiction. The majority society killed our horses, burned down our caravans, amputated our legs, and confined us to a lifelong wheelchair, leaving us paralyzed — then teaching us societal norms and shaping our lives around dependence on the system. If you do this for many generations, you do not create progress — you create systemic dependency among people who can no longer remember life lived with pride in being Roma.
The European Union builds ambitious integration frameworks, impressive strategies, and well-designed action plans. They look good in parliamentary halls. But behind them is often a deep misunderstanding of Romani life. Integration assumes deficiency. It assumes someone must be brought closer to a norm defined elsewhere. I never asked to be brought closer to anything. I wanted coexistence. Passing by. Staying if I like the place. Leaving if I do not. Nobody needs to teach me coexistence. We have centuries of living next to others without trying to dominate them.
Yes, there are Roma organizations and activists working seriously to make European funds usable and meaningful, trying to ensure that money intended for Roma communities does not disappear into corrupt state structures in countries like Hungary or Slovakia. They push for transparency and real access. But even here there is distortion. We are expected to be grateful for small portions of funding allocated in our name. Every project must loudly repeat who financed it. Logos everywhere. Gratitude displayed. A quiet performance of hierarchy — who provides and who receives. Often the so-called “integrated” Roma are placed in front as proof that the system works. Visible examples. Acceptable faces. Evidence of progress. But equality does not require staged gratitude.
For many governments, dealing honestly with Roma communities is uncomfortable. It would require admitting that for decades Roma people were targets of systematic genocide and structural discrimination. It would require speaking openly about racism among voters. That conversation is politically risky. It is often easier to fund welfare payments than to educate the majority about coexistence and confront open hostility. Paying is quieter than challenging prejudice. Drafting strategies is safer than changing attitudes.
When we asked for help, it was never about ideology. It was local and concrete. Resolving conflicts with mayors of neighboring villages who shut down water pipes during extreme summer heat to settlements that were late with payments. Entire families left without water as punishment. That is not an integration debate. That is administrative abuse. These everyday realities are often ignored while grand integration frameworks are written in air-conditioned rooms during hot summers. No one there cares about Roma children with no water.
The truth for me as a Rom is simple. I never wanted to be defined by someone else’s model of success. I never wanted to be reshaped. I wanted coexistence without supervision.
Sometimes I have this terrible urge to scream:
I am enough.
I do not need to be integrated.
I do not need to be corrected.
I do not need to be measured.
Leave me alone.
I refuse to be integrated into a society that refuses to understand that you do not babysit a people with their own culture, language, memory, and history. For centuries, we have known how to fix things from the inside, not from the outside — if only you would let us and did not destroy our natural way of life.
