'"Gypsies to the camps!": Exclusion and marginalisation of Roma in the Czech Republic'

Under Communism the Roma minority in the Czech Republic were subject to sev ere state directed assimilation policies. Since the end of the Cold War the y have endured a combination of labour market exclusion and racially motiva ted violence. The apparent historical discontinuity between the Communists' strategies of assimilation and the current forms of exclusion and marginal isation is often explained by pointing to the social and economic upheaval caused by the transition to capitalism, or the resurgence of 'ancient ethni c hatreds'. When examining anti-Roma racism (or other examples of ethnic co nflict) in the former Communist countries of Europe, commentators tend to r egard it as signifying the backwardness of these nations. These perspective s ignore racism's modern aspect. In contrast this paper seeks to highlight some of the continuities between the situation of Roma today and their hist orical position. It uses Simmel's concept of 'the Stranger' as applied by B auman to understand the ambivalent place of Roma in European modernity, at times subject to coercive assimilation, at other times on the receiving end of racial violence. It challenges narratives which attempt to Orientalise racism as the preserve of 'uncivilised and backward' nations or a white und erclass. It seeks to put racism in its place as a part of European modernit y and its deployment of assimilative or exclusionary strategies against 'St ranger' minorities.