The Rootedness of a Community of Xoraxané Roma in Rome - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 111

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The Rootedness of a Community of
Xoraxané Roma in Rome

marco solimene
(translated by Jennifer Radice)

R oma groups who originally came from Yugoslavia have been present in the
Rome area for decades.1 some settlements (for example, the Casilino 900 or Via
Candoni camps)2 represent historically constituent elements of the outskirts of
Rome, but a considerable number of Roma are to be found in small and transient
settlements, dispersed among the interstices of the urban area and in spaces left
empty by the people and institutions of Rome (see also Cervelli, chapter 3). The
Roma, with their settlements under bridges and on the banks of the tiber and
the aniene Rivers, their camper vans and caravans parked in wasteland, cross
the city and live their lives among Romans. The Romans, for their part, have
often viewed (and still view) this “otherness”—brazenly close and unpleasantly
recognizable as “the gypsies”—as an alarming invasion.
The model adopted in most of the discourse on “nomads” in italy is one
that “degypsifies” society, both practically and symbolically. on the one hand,
it is asserted as a matter of ideology that the Roma are separate from the history
and the social fabric of the territory that offers them “hospitality”; on the other
hand, policies concerning the Roma seem to be inspired primarily by a model
of “inclusion by means of exclusion.” a glaring example of this are the nomad
camps that, like all types of camp, mark the separation between those who live
in them, human rubbish that cannot be recycled, and mainstream society.3 Ye t
italy is anything but degypsified: The Roma are not only “part of the landscape,”
but also a continuing source of interactions that are more or less wanted, spo-
radic, personal, or confrontational. The Roma's relational networks, far from be-
ing closeted within a form of collective isolation, extend into networks of italians
and, in some instances, are kept up for many years. Thus, there seems to be a
close and durable relationship between specific groups and specific territories. to

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