The title of this present article is an extract from a response given by a Roma refugee to a social worker working with Ukrainian Roma families in Hungary since the war started in February 2022. This argument depicts the multiple disadvantageous situations of Roma who arrived in Hungary from Ukraine because of the war. The aim of this short paper is to depict this status of double or multiple exclusion and discrimination and to show how it is valid in linguistic, social, economic, and cultural terms as well. The article first summarizes briefly the socially disadvantageous situation and the historical background of Transcarpathian Roma and in the second part, presents the specific situation of Roma refugees and accounts for some good practices that have been established by Hungarian civil organizations since the outbreak of the war at the end of February 2022.

Before moving on to the main topic of the article, the first part of the paper gives a short overview of the region of Transcarpathia as this area of Ukraine has one of the largest Roma populations, next to Donetsk, Luhansk, Odesa, Kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Cherkassy and Poltava1. According to Judy Butt, this region has borne the full brunt of Europe’s twentieth-century travails, as it has undergone seventeen changes of statehood, including two brief periods as an independent republic in its own right. After the Hungarian Kingdom and within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, it belonged to Czechoslovakia, and during a transitional period, a part of its territory formed a short-lived state (Carpatho-Ukraine); for a short time it returned to the Kingdom of Hungary; it was annexed to the Soviet Union after another transitional period. In 1991, it was inherited by the newly formed Ukraine2. However, as Butt explains, Transcarpathia has always been the most remote, inaccessible, and poorest part of whichever state it has belonged to3.

The present Transcarpathia does not correspond to any older administrative division: the territories it encompasses today were divided between four counties of the Hungarian kingdom (Ugocsa, Máramaros, Bereg, Ung). The region, which covers 12,800 km2, is located in the extreme southwest of Ukraine and shares its borders with Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland. According to the 2001 census, this is the region where 98.2% of people with Hungarian as a native language are living in Ukraine; following Ukrainians (80.5%), Hungarians were the largest community (12.1%)4. The Magyar-speaker population is living here in about 600 towns and villages, sometimes among themselves, but most often with other ethnic groups: Ukrainians, Roma, who are often Magyar-speakers, Ruthenians, who are predominant in the mountainous areas, and Slovaks, Romanians and Russians, each of whom number a few tens of thousands. When it comes to the demographic figures of Roma in Ukraine and Transcarpathia, the numbers – similarly to other European countries’ data - vary tremendously. They range from 100,000 to half a million. While the most accepted number before the starting of the war was around 400,000, it is almost impossible to obtain accurate numbers as Roma prefer not to declare their ethnicity (for instance, at the above-mentioned census, only 0.1% of the population declared themselves as Roma)5. Moreover, the uncertainty is even more accentuated because a large part has seasonal jobs in Ukraine or Russia and a lot migrated toward Hungary and Western European countries since February 2022.

In general, Roma groups are not static and unchanging social and cultural units. Eastern Europe is the historical region where the most numerous subdivision of the Roma community is concentrated (other Roma communities living in different parts of the world are contemporary migrants or descendants of migrants who left this region about 150 years ago)6. Thus, “Ukrainian Roma” is neither a homogeneous minority, but rather a community that is very divided and fragmented in sociological, cultural, and linguistic views and also in terms of their profession. Ukraine has autochthonous groups of every of the major metagroups, having Vlax, Nordic, Carpathian and Balkan Roma7. This diversity is reflected in linguistic terms as well, as almost 45% of Ukrainian Roma speak a variant of the Roma language as their mother tongue. However, their language is not protected in Ukraine by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, as it only protects thirteen other languages belonging to minority communities (among which the Moldavian or the Jewish language, not even precisely specified). According to Hungarian linguist Miklós Kontra, there is a linguistic genocide8 in Ukraine, because Romani language is not accepted in the school system and it is also indirectly forbidden in daily contacts. Even if these ethicist, linguistics modes of action are part of the social order of the majority and similarly to other hegemonic modes of action, they are not easily diagnosed, scholars are stating that what is happening in Ukraine is nothing less than state-organized linguistic genocide in education. A monolingual and standardized education has been made compulsory for indigenous linguistic minorities as well, with the main aim of linguistic assimilation9.

Besides linguistic oppression, Ukrainian Roma suffers from greater social intolerance than any other ethnic group. As the revealing study of the European Roma Rights Center, The Misery of Law states, a number of agencies, including the police, the government, and the state public education system actively promotes anti-Romani sentiment in Ukraine and especially in Transcarpathia. Therefore, the rates of early school dropout are very high, meaning that out of a thousand Roma in Transcarpathia, only three have higher education and forty have a baccalaureate. There are completely segregated “Roma” schools in Berehov and Mukachev, right next to the Roma camps/tabor that in themselves are representing a radical form of residential segregation. According to different data gathered by the reports of human rights organizations, there are about fifty tabors in the region without any comfort and infrastructure where inhabitants not only live in extremely poor conditions but also lack necessary documents relating to home ownership as only a small percentage of the population disposes of personal/official documents10. To mention an even more radical example of spatial segregation, in the town of Berehovo, where around 6,000 Roma live on the outskirts of the city, the local government has built a 2.5-meter-high wall separating Roma’s poverty from the city’s daily life11. Moreover, the ERRC report accounts for a disturbing number of police abuse and brutality, with different crime prevention strategies especially applied to Roma, who are systematically equated with delinquents. These aggressions and incidences of sexual assaults on Romani women are consequences of dehumanizing police practices that treat Roma as objects12.

When looking at the historical background of Roma living in the Transcarpathian region, one may find an ambiguous history, comprehending one the one hand early attempts of emancipation and self-representation while on the other, there are repeating periods of oppression and social stigmatization. Roma groups had started to appear in Crimea in the early half of the eighteenth century, with recorded appearances in Ukraine dating back to 1757. With their relatively early appearance, the Roma in Ukraine was regarded as “a group that was inferior to the common people” and was succinctly forced to pay into various factions13. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Russian records showed 61,299 Roma, more than half of whom had settled in Ukraine. They were recognized as a national minority within the Soviet Union and its indigenization policy in 1925. During this period, Roma gained the right to be educated in the Romani language and to participate in the lower levels of government; great efforts by the Romani intelligentsia to create a Romani language that is “compatible with Russian orthography”. This early - and very brief - period of Soviet history can be considered a “Romani Renaissance”, during which the Roma were encouraged to assert the civil rights of their culture14.

Nevertheless, these emancipatory attempts were soon suppressed by the soviet socio-cultural policies of the USSR which had the intention to create Roma organizations under strict administrative control. As in the Soviet imagination, Roma represented a peculiar ethnic menace – being stigmatized with the negative stereotypes of being universally illiterate, nomadic, marginal, and socially parasitic – they were represented as threats to the Soviet state’s modernizing goals15. Thus, the Communist Party and Soviet state supported the transition of Roma from “backward communities” towards “conscious soviet citizens” and implemented several policies that stood for a Soviet form of modern nationhood by creating Roma Comsomols, theatres, as well as an All-Russian Union of Gypsies or a Romani-language journal, Romani Zorya (Romani Dawn), launched in 1927, that aimed to showcase the achievements of Soviet Roma, and their transformation into model proletarians16.

Curiously, in early Soviet times, there was a brief moment of imagining and arguing for a Gypsy autonomous region, similar to Birobidzhan, the Soviet Union’s remote Jewish Autonomous Region, established in 1934. As historian O’Keeffe indicates, for a brief period in 1935-36, it seemed that the Roma lobby activities may reach their goals when the chairman of the Soviet of Nationalities argued that a Gypsy Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic could be the definitive answer to integrating Romani nomads into Soviet culture and the socialist economy17.

However, this plan was very soon rejected and the Soviet state refocused on other ways to encourage Roma to change their main occupations to suit the new Soviet system; although, in the scholarly literature, opinions differ for instance on the use of force in the sedentarization of Soviet Roma. Therefore, Roma who lived in the countryside were forced to work on collective farms or to find jobs in the new enterprises. Therefore, large agricultural lands were taken away from peasants who refused to work them under the new collective laws and given to Roma. This aroused a feeling of hatred towards Roma among peasants, creating a scapegoat position18. Finally, special decrees between 1926 and 1936 obliged the authorities to allocate land to the Gypsies who want to change to a sedentary lifestyle and engage in agricultural activities, creating new, Gypsy kolkhozes. In 1956, the state issued another decree to prohibit and criminalize vagrancy, entitled: On the incorporation into the labor force of gypsies, occupied with vagrancy, which meant that those who did not want to be sedentary were sent to forced corrective labor in prison camps, According to Bulgarian historians Elena Marushiakova and Vesselin Popov, the 1956 decree was an official recognition of the failure of the state’s policy towards the Gypsies as the decree obliged them to obey the laws and norms that had been obligatory for Soviet citizens since the 1920s19.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, we may find different modalities in terms of economic and political-cultural changes. On the one hand, during the Soviet era, command economies needed unskilled Roma workers, while the newly emerging post-Socialist market economies did not, moreover, the post-Communist economic restructuring signified the closure of numerous heavy industries and the return of privatized collective farms that led to the unemployment of many Roma. As the now almost clichéd statement says, they were the first to be made redundant and the last to be hired to fill vacancies20. On the other, as Marushiakova and Popov extensively analyzed, the late 1990s saw an intensification of the international contacts of Gypsy organizations and the booming of the number of such organizations in the Russian Federation. The first Roma organization in Ukraine happened to be the Transcarpathian Cultural and Educational Association “Romani Yag” (Gypsy Fire) which was followed by a lot of other NGOs, often supported by international donors such as the Soros Foundation. In 2011, the Transcarpathian Association of the Roma Public Organizations “Ekhipe” (Unity) created an umbrella organization, the Union of public organizations and humanitarian foundations of Transcarpathia “Roma for a better life”, with the participation of more than 20 organizations21.

The second part of the paper focuses on the situation of Transcarpathian Roma since the outbreak of the war, including an introduction to their specific, multiple stigmatized statuses and the presentation of some concrete examples of their inclusion and social integration, through the presence and programs of Hungarian civil organizations.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, significant waves of migration began toward Hungary, the Czech Republic, and other European countries and according to media discourses and the accounts of humanitarian/civil workers, there is generally a much higher level of rejection toward Roma refugees than toward the “white, blond hair” Ukrainian ones. In Hungary, unlike the Ukrainians who arrived in Budapest already at the end of February 2022 and then left mostly for Western Europe, in many cases they were not welcomed into the homes of civilian volunteers or humanitarian shelters, so a lot of Transcarpathian Roma stayed in the North-Eastern part of Hungary or eventually went soon back to Ukraine. Furthermore, as Hungarian-speaking Roma families coming from Transcarpathia typically do not have the opportunity or the network of contacts to travel further and – also emphasizing the reasons to stay - a large number of men were already working in Hungary here before the war22.

When we look at the causes and the circumstances of this rejection, there are several aspects to enumerate. Firstly, Roma from Transcarpathia has Hungarian citizenship, due to the 2010 adoption by the right-wing majority of the Hungarian Parliament of a law giving de jure Hungarian citizenship to all descendants of Hungarians23. The institution of dual citizenship for Hungarians living outside the borders was introduced by the Fidesz government, in a situation far different from the current war conflict, with the intention of increasing its voter base. Meanwhile, Roma who fled from Transcarpathia with dual citizenship did not receive any support in Hungary, as they are considered Hungarian citizens. Moreover, these Roma could not be granted refugee status, only the more limited asylum status, because the refugee status is granted to those who are persecuted in their home country and, in legal terms, those who come mainly from the Transcarpathian region are not granted refugee status because Hungary is not directly affected by the war24. Also, as a report from a research conducted by the community organization Romaversitas25 in the summer of 2022 stated, workers from Hungarian Roma NGOs and civil society organizations have been monitoring the situation of people arriving from Ukraine, specifically, Roma refugees, and their experiences revealed a range of discriminatory and prejudicial mechanisms. Among others, authorities who were stationed at the border treated Roma refugees differently from non-Roma refugees. In the town of Záhony, when a larger group of Transcarpathian Roma arrived, the mayor ordered the closing of the tents run by the municipality and the Reformed Charity Service. It was also typical that legal assistance and access to legal aid and official information was very limited to them, while the police and the border authorities were checking their identity much more often than in the case of non-Roma refugees and used sometimes derogatory language.26 Besides the discriminatory behavior of the authorities, we may detect racist discourses even among civil and humanitarian organizations. For instance, as an article recalls, a former employee of the Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta Service remembers an incident when the workers distributing the donations asked him: which child would he take the wipe for, a normal child or a gypsy?27

During the first weeks of the crisis caused by the war, Roma families were sheltered mainly in civil, religious, and municipal institutions that were converted into makeshift shelters. In general, they were institutions that had the infrastructure to accommodate large numbers of people, or could be quickly set up: homeless shelters, temporary family shelters, workers’ hostels, summer camps and campsites, educational institutions, community centers, and container homes. However, in many accommodations, such as campsites or containers, heating and other facilities for winterization were difficult or impossible. Another recurring problem of these types of accommodation was that they were generally overcrowded and cramped28.

Meanwhile, for those Roma families who wish to stay for a longer time, finding other types of accommodation also seems extremely challenging. According to a survey conducted in June 2022, Transcarpathian Roma is the ones who are almost certainly not rented out, they are severely lacking in information, many of them have no access to any meaningful help, and if they are dealt with at all by the Hungarian care system, somehow they almost always end up in the most segregated places. The difficulties of finding a rental property are also often faced by middle-class Ukrainians in Budapest, with some landlords who advertise their property finding it too cumbersome or risky to rent to refugees. In the case of Roma, rejection is much more common, even if there are no large families applying, but only a mother and her child29. As Anita, an interviewee from an article from September 2022 - who also suffers from epilepsy and therefore finds it particularly difficult to cope with the crowds in refugee camps - stated: “as soon as a landlord sees us, it’s obvious that he’s not going to rent the flat to us. Because we are gypsies, refugees, and have two small children30.”

Besides the modalities of housing conditions – where we can detect the recurring pattern of leaving segregated living conditions to arrive in another type of segregation – there is another important aspect where the presence of rather the lack of social inclusion appears and it is the education of Roma refugee children in Hungary. As any psychological or social scientific literature points out, it is particularly important for children fleeing war, that they receive a regular education as soon as possible, as any kind of educational activity or occupation that systematizes daily life is an essential element of the child’s sense of security. However, in the already overburdened Hungarian public education system, schooling/induction can be a difficult administrative and emotional process for refugee parents and children, in which – again – the Transcarpathian Roma refugee children are a particularly vulnerable group in many respects31. It is really hard to assume the percentage of all school-age/preschool-age Roma children who – since their arrival – attended public education but the accessible data shows that it is a relatively small percentage, only less than half of them. The reasons for this may include administrative difficulties, among others the lack of social security and registered address32.

Fortunately, besides the difficulties perceived within public education, there are good practices of civil support and initiatives that are aiming to integrate Transcarpathian Roma families, especially their children, in different forms of after-school activities or summer camps. One of the best examples is the refugee shelter located next to Lake Balaton, in Fonyód, which - under the professional management of the Hungarian social enterprise NestingPlay33, - was one of the first in the country to introduce children into the education system. The shelter in Fonyód started as a 5-week-long summer camp where three civil associations organized and managed complex educational and skill development programs for children. Gábor Daróczi, the CEO of the Foundation for Global Human Dignity who have been cooperating with NestingPlay in the project, emphasized that in the beginning, they were not prepared for this level of underperformance. However, they introduced programming languages that MIT researchers have developed and made available free of charge for everyone to learn, even for people who can only read and write a little. According to him, these children had never experienced in their lives the possibility of living their Roma identity in a positive way. For most of them, being Roma meant that they would not be allowed into the disco and that they would be in danger of being looked at. These children also internalized negative stereotypes that Gypsies are said to steal or to have bad taste. The animations they these children made in the camp also showed Gypsies stealing the tank34. Since September, the shelter rather functions as an accommodation as the enrolment in local public schools was fortunately possible. Thus, this meant adapting to their abilities at the time of enrolment: all the Transcarpathian children started school here in a common group, even if now they are in first and second grade. However, there are 15-year-olds who are in the sixth grade and 14-year-olds who can neither read nor write, and they are being helped to improve their reading and writing skills in the shelter35.

Another positive example is the TALÉTA special school, working in the 8th district of Budapest which was established by a voluntary social organization to provide housing, care, and education for Roma children and adults fleeing war in Transcarpathia. As Ágnes Pletser, one of the coordinators of TALÉTA states:

“We faced brutal school traumas. Apart from the fact that 60 percent of the children who came to us cannot read or write, the children were full of bad experiences. Such as being made to sit in the back of the classroom by the teacher, having their heads smashed into the desk, and if they don’t have money for a taxi, as they call the minibus, they walk eight kilometers to school every morning, arriving dirty and tired36.”

TALÉTA ensures various activities: in addition to learning, the children have the opportunity to participate in drama classes, dog therapy, and grief therapy to help them deal with trauma, and in the summer, they had many excursions, as well as various types of arts and crafts sessions. They provide also adult education in the school and teachers receive methodological support. The founders noticed that it was easier to integrate children of preschool age, so many of them started kindergarten in March, while the school remained for the lower and upper school children. TALÉTA, despite having difficulties finding a proper location, is continuing its activities, by cooperating with several other civic organizations and public entities such as the Faculty of Humanities of Pázmány Péter Catholic University or the Hungarian Scout Association.

Although these good practices encourage the families to stay for a longer time, the level of willingness of Roma communities to return to Transcarpathia is very variable. The sense of uncertainty and vulnerability is reflected in the fact that despite most of the men has been working in Hungary as day laborers on construction sites, and that most of them had lived in Transcarpathia in abject poverty, the families interviewed by Romaversitas would move back to Ukraine in the long term, “because it is their home37”. Moreover, there is a certain sense of responsibility from the civil workers’ side who consider the inclusion of Transcarpathian Roma in Hungary as a chance for a better level of living. As Eszter Harsányi, CEO of Nestingplay Hungary observed:

“Because if we let them go, they will go back to exactly where they came from. (…) It’s not clear whether they’ll go back or stay, and the question is whether this will make enough of a difference to these people, these children, to give them a push to break out of this misery. I’m admittedly skeptical38.”

Adding to that, there is the question, mentioned in the first part of the paper, about citizenship, national and ethnic identity, and the correlations between these concepts. This multi-directional exclusion may be a reason to see why certain wish to stay in Hungary. As reports point out, we may ask why they do not want to go home, even if their villages and houses are not directly threatened by war now. An answer to that - apart from the fact that it is already difficult for anyone to cope in a country at war - they would have to join the army without feeling any call to participate in this war, as they have no Ukrainian national identity. As already highlighted in the title of this article, these people experience in almost every segment of their life that “they are too Ukrainian for the Russians, too Hungarian for the Ukrainians, and too Gypsy for the Hungarians39.”