From Folk Devils to Modern State Devils: The Securitization and Racial Policing of the Roma in Italy

This chapter follows the anti-Roma laws in Italy, where the government has moved away from inclusion policies for the Roma to downright ethnic repression, policing and surveillance. Despite the fact that the majority of Roma are no longer nomadic, the public still associate them with nomadism and use their non-nomadic lifestyle as a weapon against them, by monitoring the Roma camps and creating special laws that secure the continuous repression of the Roma. Thus, while their status as outsiders and nomads previously made the Roma devilish figures and imagined as travelling and stealing “Gypsies”, it is now their lack of nomadism that is seen as a threat, as the Roma have now settled in society.