Whenever ethnic tensions arise in Europe, the Romani people brace for more hatred and violence. The Roma, known for centuries by the derogatory name “gypsies,” often live on the fringes of European societies. During World War Two, an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 Roma perished in the Holocaust. As recently as 2009 and 2010, the French government launched an anti-crime drive by deporting 18,000 Roma to Bulgaria and Romania. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the six million Roma in the European Union were widely blamed for spreading the virus and were subject to enhanced lockdowns and quarantines in Bulgaria and Slovakia.
Anti-Roma sentiment in modern Romanian society is pervasive. A 2020 study on Romanian attitudes towards Roma people found that 72 percent of Romanians didn’t trust Roma people. Parents commonly warn their children that if they don’t behave, they’ll be given to the gypsies. The Romanian word for gypsy, ţigan, has been turned into a verb used to describe someone behaving badly: “a se ţigani.”
But Nicu Dumitru, a coordinator for a Roma activist NGO, the Aresel Platform, who has spent time in the United States, warns against viewing Roma-Romanian strife through an American race paradigm: “We don’t see color the same way you do. You won’t hear people talk about whites and people of color. Roma tend to be darker, but there are plenty of Roma with blond hair and blue eyes and plenty of very dark featured Romanians.”
Nicu admits, however, that what makes a Roma person Roma can be hard to pin down. Many Roma people no longer speak Romani, wear traditional clothes, or adhere to the cultural norms of their ancestors—and yet they remain Roma.
Unfortunately, for most of Romania’s Roma people, marginalization also means poverty and a host of related problems. A 2018 European Union Minorities and Discrimination Study Survey found that 80 percent of Roma in Romania lived below the at-risk-of-poverty threshold. One in three lived in a dwelling without running water.
As a photojournalist, I became interested in Roma culture while studying Romanian during the pandemic. By Summer 2023, I had just finished a Fulbright project in Moldova when a controversial performance by Roma singer Gheboasa sparked a national debate in Romania over anti-Roma racism. These events inspired me to cross the border to look deeper into the challenges that the marginalized group face. The photos below were from a three-week trip in Romania, during which I interviewed and photographed Roma people from different walks of life.
Liliana, a fifty-six-year-old Roma woman, collects trash to sell to recyclers. She told me that relations between Roma and Romanians in Ferentari, a working-class neighborhood of Bucharest, were strained. Romanians, she said, were better off than Roma people and looked down on them. She told me she didn’t think this would ever change.
Iancu Titi, left, a forty-one-year-old bus driver, hanging out with family and friends on a Saturday afternoon in Ferentari, Bucharest. Unlike Liliana, Iancu, who is also Roma, said Roma people and Romanians in the area get along quite well.
Anda Mihaela, who comes from a long line of witches, prepares a ritual outside her home in the suburbs of Bucharest. She says that Roma women experience more discrimination because they are more likely than Roma men to wear traditional clothes.
Traian Caldarar, a metal worker and town councilman from Bratieu, a picturesque Roma town in Transylvania known for its copper crafts, believes it is important that his community preserve the language and traditions that make them Roma.
A group of men and boys play footy-tennis in Brateiu, Romania.
A betting game being played in the middle of a Roma shanty town known as Craica in Baia Mare, Romania.
A Roma boy holds a puppy outside of the Soviet-era gold and copper factory where hundreds of Roma families were forcibly moved in 2012.
When the families arrived at the factory, they found rooms full of jars of toxic chemicals, including sulfuric acid. Public outrage across the country drove Baia Mare authorities to remove the chemicals. However, eleven years later, the property is still full of trash and open sewage.
Petre Gheorghe, a sixty-three-year-old Roma man, volunteers in Bucharest for Partidul AUR, which stands for the Alliance for Romanian Unification but abbreviates to GOLD. Founded in 2019, the far-right party has proven surprisingly popular with Roma voters despite embracing rhetoric that's exclusionary toward non-ethnic Romanians.
Gabriel Gavris, who performs under the stage name Gheboasă, hypes up the crowd at a club in Galati, Romania, on September 30, 2023. His musical style is called “trapanele” because it combines an American trap sound with Manele, a contemporary form of Roma music.