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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Friday, December 10, 2004 Maxwell School Study Examines Europe's Roma (Gypsy) Minority
SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Maxwell School of Syracuse University researchers have published a path-breaking study on poverty and social exclusion of Europe’s Roma (Gypsy) minority. Roma in an Expanding Europe: Breaking the Poverty Cycle provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of Roma living conditions in Central and Eastern Europe, where most of Europe’s Roma minority lives. With the addition of eight Central and East European countries to the European Union in May 2004, Roma became the largest and most vulnerable non-state minority group in Europe. The study draws from surveys -- including the first comparative, cross-country, household survey on Roma ethnicity and poverty -– and interviews that amplify the voices of Roma themselves. The study finds that Roma poverty is multifaceted and can be tackled only by a policy approach that attends to all dimensions of Roma social exclusion. It advocates an inclusive approach that focuses on the potential contributions that Roma can make to social and economic development in order to insure that future generations of Roma will not live in poverty. “Increasingly severe poverty among Roma in Central and Eastern Europe has been one of the most striking developments since the transition from socialism began in 1989,” said Mitchell A. Orenstein, one of the book’s authors. “Although Roma have historically been among the poorest people in Europe, the extent of the collapse of their living conditions is unprecedented.” The book, published by the World Bank and written by Orenstein, director of the Center for European Studies at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University; Erika Wilkens, a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at Maxwell; and Dena Ringold of the World Bank, was awarded a prize for the most innovative policy analysis from the World Bank. It provides a comprehensive assessment of trends and causes of Roma poverty as well as recommendations for coping with the crisis. World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn wrote the foreword to the volume and has encouraged European prime ministers to declare the next decade a “decade of inclusion” of Roma in Europe. The Center for European Studies, part of the newly endowed Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, advances teaching, research, and leadership on contemporary European affairs throughout the upstate New York community and nationally, in partnership with the Institute for European Studies at Cornell. More information on the center is available through its website at http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/moynihan. Additional information about this study may be obtained by contacting any of the following:
Additional information about the Roma is also available at the World Bank Roma website: lnweb18.worldbank.org/ECA/ECSHD.nsf/links_roma/roma site.
# # # The Maxwell School of Syracuse University, founded in 1924, is the premier academic institution in the United States committed to scholarship, civic leadership, and education in public and international affairs. Maxwell is home to Syracuse University’s social science departments and to numerous nationally recognized multidisciplinary graduate programs in public policy, international studies, social policy, and conflict resolution. Maxwell's graduate program in public administration -- the first of its kind -- is ranked consistently the best in the nation.
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