Lausanne World Pulse – Urban Articles – The Roma (Gypsy) Community in Bucharest, Romania
(Editor’s note: In September, we began a year-long series on urban slum ministry around the world. This month is our second installment. For an overview of the series and an introduction to key terms, click here.)
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Of the three national capitals situated on the Danube River, Bucharest is by far the largest, with a population of 2.1 million inhabitants. |
An Overview of Bucharest
“The Paris of the East,” as it was known for generations, is the ancient city of Bucharest, Romania. It is one of the three “B” capitals (Budapest, Hungary and Belgrade, Serbia being the other two) situated on the Danube River as it flows from the mountain ranges of Germany and Switzerland eastward to the Black Sea. Of the three national capitals, Bucharest is by far the largest, with an ever-swelling population of 2.1 million inhabitants. During the Communist era (1947-1989), the city’s population was constrained as the movement of Romanian people was restricted by the government. With the fall of Communism, however, the floodgate to the city was thrown wide open and the city’s demographics swelled by nearly 750,000 people in less than a decade. The massive influx was a combination of unemployed rural nationals seeking job opportunities and ethnic minorities looking for asylum from prejudicial segregation; education and job discrimination; and racial and ethnic hatred. It was into this milieu that some fifty to seventy-five thousand Roma (Gypsies) migrated.
The Roma Population
No one knows for sure the exact number of Roma people in Romania. Biased government statistics place the figure as low as 500,000, whereas European Union demographics estimate the Roma population at 1.5 million. The problem of accuracy is further exacerbated as Roma activists agree on a figure of two million to 2.5 million.
The Roma people emigrated from India to east-central Europe in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries for reasons yet unknown. There have been a great deal of hypotheses proposed; however, no facts have been established. What is known is that their migration took them across the ancient Silk Road of south-central Russia and the Caucasus Mountains toward the Balkans. The Roma are a people without a national heritage, common national language, religion, flag or representative voice to speak on their behalf. The world population of Roma is placed today at twenty million; Romania has by far the largest single element, followed by Hungary and Albania.
Generally, the Roma are barred from acquiring proper housing and restrained from finding job opportunities.
It is conservatively estimated that more than 180,000 Roma people reside in an already congested metropolitan environment, where affordable housing is at a premium. It must be noted that the Roma people have been marginalized for generations. It was not until the mid to late nineteenth century that Romania removed the stigma of the Roma population from being “slaves” of the state. Suspicion and distrust of the Roma population and their cultural differences persist to this day. Philosophically, there is still a sense that as citizens, they are powerless and non-compliant to civic rule or authority.
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Simona Grigore ministers to Roma children in cities in the central region of Romania. She works with congregations seeking to do integral mission in these communities. She is also completing a degree in religious education. |