Roma: In France, a community kept out of the insertion

Difficulties of access to housing, education, employment ... The inaction of the public authorities contributes to marginalize the Roma.

The cabins are on stilts, built along the expressway leading out of Paris. To access it, you have to step over the security guardrail and climb the embankment covered with all kinds of things: shoes, blankets, refrigerator, stools without feet ... From above, you can hear the cars running at a brisk pace, but surprisingly, a silence seizes. The doors of the huts are wide open. There is nobody. In one of them, life seems to have stopped suddenly. The walls are covered with colorful fabrics, toys are scattered on a carpet. A blanket has remained on the table, two chicken legs are still on the plate. The inhabitants fled in haste, panicked. Most of them returned to Romania, terrorized by multiple attacks: beatings, pebbles,

At the origin of these attacks, this rumor as unfounded as it is uncontrollable, which reappears from time to time: a network of Roma, circulating aboard a white van (the color changes from one time to another) would kidnap children to prostitute them or resell their organs. This Wednesday, four young people were appearing before the Criminal Court of Bobigny, suspected of having participated in a punitive expedition against Roma in Clichy-sous-Bois, a suburb of Paris . The sociologist Olivier Peyroux is not surprised. "How to be? Antiroman racism is so strong, so uninhibited, that these rumors are not surprising, we know the mechanisms, although it is always impressive to see such a spread of violence. "It recalls the story of Darius, 17, beaten and left for dead in a cart in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine (Seine-Saint-Denis), in 2014. Again, the attack was part of an unfounded rumor . For the sociologist, these acts of violence are symptomatic of racism that is pervasive in society, maintained in a certain way by impunity and discriminatory public policies against Roma. A study he conducted in 2017 on behalf of the association Trajectoires and Secours Catholique to understand the dynamics of people living in slums shows how successive governments hide - while affirming the opposite - in a logic of rotting and keeping Roma in precariousness."Everything is done to discourage them from moving to France by making the reception conditions complicated. But this policy creates social problems more than anything, keeping them away from society, " says Olivier Peyroux.

The community is however small in the Hexagon. They would be 15,000 in the territory. There is no precise figure, ethnic statistics being banned in France. The only data available, inevitably biased, is the number of people in slums. "What keeps the idea that the Roma live necessarily in an extreme precariousness, while some are coming out and are perfectly integrated into the society", deplores the general director of Romeurope, Manon Fillonneau. "Despite all the obstacles that are put to them, they get out of the street after five years on average," according to the study by Olivier Peyroux. But the obstacles to their integration are numerous. Non-exhaustive list.

Repeated evacuations
This is the first obstacle to integration, systematically cited by community activists and social workers: repeated evacuation of slums (without real relocation solution) makes living conditions even more difficult and integration paths very difficult. complicated. Many are evicted and find refuge in road-side cars or in hastily constructed cabins on unsecured land without water or electricity. Assumed in an uninhibited way during Sarkozy's time, this policy of "dismantling" the camps continues today. In 2012, under Holland, a circular signed yet the end of evacuations of slum without solution of relocation. In fact, it has not really been applied, with a few exceptions.

In January 2018, rebelote. An instruction, sent to the prefects, rectors of academia and regional health agencies, sets as an objective the resorption of shantytowns within five years. "But the" at the same time "also exists for shantytowns, quips the collective Romeurope. The speech is very proactive ... At the same time, the number of evictions has soared by 45% last year. 9700 people were evicted in 2018 from 171 different places [without permanent alternative accommodation, ed] " A every expulsion, the whole social accompaniment process is shattered. "The evacuations break social work, we must start from scratch," laments Pierre-Charles Hardouin, head of the department "vulnerable public" at the City Hall of Paris.

For three years, the city has set up a maraud to help Roma on the street. But in practice, social workers spend most of their time running behind families to keep in touch. "Some disappear either because their camp is expelled, or because they leave regularly in Romania for fear or exhaustion," says one of the marauders. In jargon, they call it "the pendularity", these round trips between home and host countries.

In the van, that day, her colleague is upset. She has just learned that one of the families she was accompanying fled to Italy. One of the children had appointments a few days later to the maternal and child protection (PMI) to be vaccinated, essential step to enroll in the school.

Schooling: an obstacle course
"How can we deprive children of school? How can one do such a thing in France? " Corinne, a French teacher in Seine-Saint-Denis, is one of those invisible citizens who spend a crazy energy to help. For the past ten years, she has been fighting - among other things - to enroll Roma children in schools. In the texts, any child of 6 years old (soon 3 years old), present on the French soil, must be educated. In fact, this obligation is not respected everywhere. In Paris, Dominique Versini, assistant in charge of exclusion and former defender of children, defends herself:"There is no blocking of town halls, it is the opposite. We have a very proactive child protection policy to ensure that all children are in school. We accompany the families, and once everything has been tried, we sometimes seize the prosecutor. "

The events told by Corinne, activist in the field, still question. "Sometimes, agents ask for administrative documents not possible, in a total arbitrariness and variable from one time to another. At first, I obeyed, I ran all Paris to bring back the requested piece. Until I realized that this was just a way of discouraging me ... " Once, the family she accompanies is asked for ... a certificate of non-marriage! Olivier Peyroux is only half-surprised when he is told about these testimonies: "When we talk informally with the elected officials, many explain that if they open too much the doors of their schools, they then pay the high price electorally. , with parents of students on the back. "In his study, conducted in 2017 on a representative sample, it emerged that 41% of children living in slums did not go to school. And 30% would never have gone! The associations are disappointed. The state has a responsibility, especially to objectify the problem. "How is it that there is not a solid and official number of children deprived of school?" Asks Manon Fillonneau of Romeurope. In a forum published in the autumn by Liberation, a group of associations and teachers' unions called for a single voice to set up an observatory of non-schooling. Recently, parliamentarians relayed the request by tabling an amendment to the Blanquer law on the school of trust. He was rejected.

No desire to help access to employment
Until 1 st January 2014, Romanian and Bulgarian nationals were in fact prevented from working in France. Transitional measures, taken in the context of their accession to the European Union, limited work permits to a very restrictive list of professions. Above all, delays in obtaining authorization were so long that they discouraged any potential employer ... In fact, the Roma were kept in economic precariousness and subsistence strategies (moonlighting, cheating, theft, etc.).

Since the lifting of these restrictions, the situation has changed. With the condition of being helped. Ali Nabti is a trainer referent to the local plan for the insertion and the employment (Plie) of Plaine-Commune (Seine-Saint-Denis). It accompanies the public furthest from employment, those who leave prison or who do not find work because approaching the age of retirement or carriers of handicap. In its target audience, there are also the homeless, and sometimes the Roma. Last year, a dozen went into his office. He does the count: eight work."In reality, bosses do not care about the skin color or the origin of people. What interests them before anything else is to pay the cheapest possible. It's no more difficult for others to find work for them. From the moment they are motivated and oriented towards our services, we get there! "

They must be oriented towards the right structures by the social workers ... This is only possible with a minimum of stability, even in precarious housing. There is another obstacle that Ali Nabti raises, "access to language. Most have never been to school in Romania, so it's even harder for them to learn to read and write French. The state should put the package in the literacy classes, it would really help them. But lacking the political will to integrate, the measures for Roma integration are not always implemented. A recent initiative raises some hope: the prefecture of the Ile-de-France region has created since last summer French courses for people living in slums. And so the Roma.