1st Edition

The Political Economy of Extreme Poverty in Eastern Europe A Comparative Historical Perspective of Romanian Roma

234 Pages 22 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

234 Pages 22 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book examines the creation of extreme poverty in Eastern Europe, focusing on Romanian Roma, through a comparative historical perspective on its roots and the socio-economic and political mechanisms that have shaped it in labor, housing, and migration. This interdisciplinary book explores the (re)production of extreme poverty among the Roma across different political economy regimes.... Read more

Introduction; 1 On the fringes of mainstream: Assessing the extreme poverty of the Roma people in Romania—A historical perspective; 2 Economic dependency, race, and industrial labor shifts in an East European (semi)periphery: The case of the Roma in late socialist Romania; 3 Premature deindustrialization and postsocialist Roma poverty: The political economy of unskilled labor; 4 Roma racialization and housing unevenness in Romania across political economy regimes; 5 The Political (macro) economy of poverty in Romania (1990–2023); 6 The flexibility and mobility of labor, the temporality of industrial life, and the reproduction of poverty under capitalism; 7 Ethnicity matters: Transnational labor migration in a Romanian postsocialist periphery; 8 Migration and street work among marginalized Roma: From livelihood strategies in Romania to political realities in Norway; 9 Poverty and the Roma as a lasting entanglement in Central and Eastern Europe

Biography

Enikő Vincze is a Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies at Babeș-Bolyai University, Romania. She co-edited Racialized Labour in Romania: Spaces of Marginality at the Periphery of Global Capitalism (2018) and Uneven Real Estate Development in Romania at the Intersection of Deindustrialization and Financialization (Routledge, 2024).

Cornel Ban is an Associate Professor of International Political Economy at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. His book, Ruling Ideas: How Neoliberalism Goes Local (2016) received the British International Studies Association’s Political Economy Award for 2017. His research interests are international political economy, sociology of institutions and professions, and comparative political economy.

Sorin Gog is a Lecturer at the Sociology Department of the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He is the author of multiple studies on Roma marginality, capitalist transformations, and neoliberal subjectivities. He is a co-editor of Spirituality, Oganization and Neoliberalism: Understanding Lived Experiences (2020).

Jon Horgen Friberg is a Research Professor in Sociology working at the Fafo Institute for Labour and Social Research in Oslo, Norway. His research interests are related to international migration and immigrant integration, focusing on labor markets, educational systems, social inequality, poverty, and welfare, as well as on issues of identity, religion, and cultural change in multiethnic societies. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, Friberg has an extensive track record of international scientific publications.