Roma, Social Exclusion and Romani Settlements as Marginalized Place: The Case of Loke

Abstract

This anthropological contribution to marginality examines the narratives and imaginaries of Roma, place, social exclusion and Romani settlements as marginalized places. In the first part, the chapter focuses on the Romani studies and social anthropology and their exploration of social construction of space and place. It will show that the marginalization of Roma is connected with deprivation as a form of spatial isolation, and social exclusion. Marginalization is related to the production of space as a social product and its multiple aspects of relationship between the social and spatial. In the second part of the presentation, the case of Loke, a Romani settlement in SE of Slovenia near Krško, is explored within a wider framework of the spatial management. Loke is labeled an informal Romani settlement, where Roma settled on public property. In the previous political regime after the WW II, the company for forestry allowed Roma to settle on the property in exchange for work in forestry, when they planted trees. After 2002, within the wider framework for legalization of Romani settlements on local and national level, the spatial management of Loke was not planned nor solved. The settlement was proclaimed illegal by the local community, meaning Roma lived under the threat of being expelled for several years. The two central questions of this contribution are: first, how did Roma construct and change the meanings of their social exclusion (or social marginality) and the geographical marginality of their settlement when the legalization of Romani settlements near Krško area (SE of Slovenia) was already underway; second, how is the meaning of localities – which is usually constituted through movement – constructed in Romani narratives of belonging to a marginal place that was discursively constructed as ghetto?.