The national project for Roma, Sinti and Caminanti children inclusion: A Socio-Anthropological overview

Abstract

The article develops a critical, applied and interdisciplinary perspective, to contrast anti-Gypsyism.  The research has been carried out within the “National Project for Inclusion and Integration of Roma children, Sinti and Caminanti”, realized during 2013/14 in the city of Milan. The theoretical frame refers to different dimensions, respectively represented by the paradigm of contrast of anti-Gypsyism, the researches focused on educational policies towards Roma children and the inclusive education theory. Within this framework, the article analyses the assumptions on which the whole intervention was based and will provide an ethnographic account of the training activities carried out with the contribution of the authors in two schools in Milan. Based on these data, the article highlights the elements of continuity and discontinuity in educational policy toward Roma children and their families implemented in the city in the last years. The article analyses eventually the results of the training that was carried out, highlighting the effects produced by the interaction between research and reality. The analysis aims at revealing that anti-Gypsysm is, paradoxically, necessary for the emergence of the opposite paradigm (“contrasting anti-Gypsyism”), within which discourses are produced, funds are allocated, and the projects and careers of “opponents to anti-Gypsyism” are advanced.