Next, we enclose an analysis of hardships and intervention proposals with the Rom Community in Palermo.
This report has been elaborated by Fenice Cooperativa Sociale, as part of CNCA. They are starting to face health promotion among the Rom Community in Italy.


The Rom Community in Palermo

Brief analysis of hardships and intervention proposals

 

Alessio Ajovalasit, Maurizio Crispi

 

Foreword

The migration phenomenon of the gypsy community features this unusual characteristic: it concerns indifferently any country of the European continent, and it is, in the meantime, amongst the less known and studied.

This happens not only because of the strong identity that it seems to offer (and sometimes oppose) toward the territory on which it is located, but also because of the undeniable difficulty that one can face trying to interact with it, no matter if it’s a public administration or someone trying to collect materials for a personal inquiry or a research.

What we will try to propose here is a concentrate (and obviously not complete) approach pattern to the subject, provided that many factors, mainly in the recent months, look modified after the latest events of the balcanic area. Moreover, the same factors seem to have become chronic following the transformation of part of the gypsy community resident in the metropolitan area of Palermo from nomadic to permanent.

We must add some empirical considerations to these first elements:

According to this point of view, it will be compulsory to verify the relationships established between gypsies and deviance and/or gypsies and use, dealing of drugs. We well try to refer about these facts later on.

Since this situation features so many aspects, it will be convenient to try and expose it under many point of views, considered how hard the approach can be due to the lack of information available.

 

GYPSIES AND THE TOWN ADMINISTRATION

It looks like in no field as in this particular one it’s possible to find differences between what the law provides for and what actually happens: between what "should be" and what "is".

The town of Palermo hosts nowadays a nomadic community in which one cannot identify one single ethnic component, but many, in consideration of religions, different spoken dialects, social customs, social structure, and so on.

The pre-existing balance with the local community has been progressively altered by, at first with the beginning of a massive exodus of the most needy populations coming from the eastern countries after the fall of the communist dictatorships, then with the wars in the various countries of ex-Yugoslavia. Moreover, the ethnic composition of the gypsy population has become "stratified" after the arrival of gypsies, Serbs or Croats refugees and Moslems of different ethnic origin.

This situation has originated a growth of the nomadic population present in the various traditional settlements, plus the increased number of the more needy subjects, all this leading to an increase of the inflow in criminal activities or connected to a negative image scarcely acceptable by the local community.

According to a recent study, the gypsy community in Palermo is the fourth in Italy, featuring about 700 units, following Rome and Milan.

Unfortunately, when we tried to explore the local law about gypsies we found a numbers of rules (and a regulation n.45 8.2.1996) provided for, but never applied. In this case, the regulation provided the institution of a Gypsy Office (art.3), of a local manager assisted by a gypsy, this last responsible for the camp. (art.2), and the allocation of areas for the definitive settlement throughout the installation of facilities (toilets and the like) and the definition of receptivity limits for any camp. U to the present day, the allocation of the camps is the "hot matter" bouncing from a local department (Special Tasks) to another (Social Affairs), and no attribution of competence has been determined yet.

The result of this operative delay has produced a pathological and uncontrolled evolution of camps. Actually, until the end of 1997, the camps being "tolerated" by the town administration were two:

When the town administration decided the demolition of the Romagnolo camp after an intimation of the AUSL (the local medical authority) denouncing the extremely dangerous hygienic situation, all families residing in this camp didn’t find any other solution but moving to the Favorita camp, making it overcrowded. For a further description of this episode please read the following section.

Even the plan provided for the census of the residing communities has never been done, so that the only available data capable to "give a snapshot" of the nomadic population are the ones coming from the inquiries done by the Foreigners Office of the Police Department.

Amongst the project come to an end we must remember the one about scholarship for the gypsy minors, that has been anyway marked by a remarkable quota of children leaving the school before term. This project has been carried out through the public schools, both the primary and the high ones.

 

GYPSIES AND THE TOWN

Before explaining how the ROM community is structured in Palermo, it could be useful to point out that the term "nomadic" is now to be considered obsolete, considered the ROMs trend to become permanent more than itinerant.

Families started to build huts ever since the Romagnolo camp began being settled, enhancing the area surrounding the car and the caravan. In the Favorita camp this habit settled down and strengthened during the very last years, and became a standard custom used by those who had decided to consider Palermo as a permanent "homeground", making journeys and any sort of voyages less frequent, and beginning to interact with the local social pattern by looking for a job (and this is just one case we propose).

Outside this camp, whose limits can be identified on one side with one of the promenade leading inside the park and on the other sides with the park itself, it is possible to notice a huge open square, mostly used by circuses coming on the traditional period, December and January.

Here, during the remaining months, those who can be properly defined nomadic gather together: they are mainly families coming to visit their relatives, or on occasions such as weddings, or even people still looking for a place they consider suitable for their needs.

It seems that amongst those ones it is possible to remark all those cases of burglars, shoplifting and minor crimes. To supply better explanation to this, we’ll try now to expose something that in the latest month has started featuring all characteristic of a "urban legend"

 

GYPSIES: DEVIANCE, REAL AND SUPPOSED, DRUG ADDICTION

In the social imaginary, just as the immigrant coming from far eastern countries is acknowledged as trusty and hard-worker, or as the one coming from north Africa countries is considered scarcely competent and fickle in his duties, using the same prejudices even around and upon gypsies a social etiquette has been easily built, making them "pariah among pariah", since they are not tied to any national root and they tend not to "get to like" the country and they town they live in. Terms such as "nomadic" and "gypsy" tend to coincide with definitions implicating something negative, refused or dirty.

They are "the most hated by Italians" who tolerate lesser and lesser misery, begging, stealing and above all the diversity of these people.

Because of this fact, then, the gypsy is often looked at with diffidence, and the jobs he is able to get are short-timed and of a lowest nature. The easiest solution, the one largely accepted by the gypsy communities is begging on the streets or in the building halls. This activity is known under the name of "manghel" in the romanes language. Besides, the recent growth of cases of burglars made it possible the diffusion , at first shyly, now frequently, of a small leaflet showing a list of symbols that gypsies would put beside gates and doorbells, to mark apartments with this code and make them targets.

If a code conceived like this really exist cannot here be neither denied nor confirmed.

But we can surely define as fake what is compulsively hung in building halls as well as distributes to citizens. On this leaflet (that can be examined in the attachment section) many alpha-numeric symbols appearing have an easy reading key. A simple and superficial inquiry can show many curious aspects: How come, for instance, in a so essential code we can find more symbols all featuring the same meaning?

But what raises our doubts is definitely the fact that many symbols showed on the list, like a capital "D" to indicate a target that could be hit on Sundays (in Italian: Domenica). Or also numbers like 112 and 113 (in Italy, numbers used to call Police) to identify houses with alarms. The ingenuity consisting in using the Italian initial letters ("D" for "Domenica" or "M" for "Mattina" –morning-) pushes to classify as false and tendentious the document, even because group of linguistic origin not Latin may hardly choose Italian as coding language. This becomes even more incredible when we notice that the cultural tradition belonging to this specific ethnic group is oral more than written.

Viceversa, it is possible to impute it to some specific pressure groups willing to raise fear and hostility towards the gypsy community.

 

SERVICES FOR DRUG ADDICTION AND GYPSIES

Nowadays the largest gypsy group in Palermo is located in the territory pertaining the Sanitary District (ex USL 61), and so pertaining to the competent Ser.T. for all matters concerning the abuse of both doping substances and alcohol Actually, and especially after the dismantle of the camp in Romagnolo, the only conspicuous nomadic group within the metropolitan area of Palermo is pertaining to this district and its Ser.T.

With regards to the closing of the Romagnolo camp, a great change took place in the health reference poles of the nomadic population.

While contacts with the social-sanitary structures would formerly occur following to the pattern of the "cheetah skin" throughout the different structures operating on the territory, now with the growth of the Favorita camp and the disappearing of the Romagnolo one, all requests for medical interventions would probably be concerned with – even for geographical matters –the social and medical structures located in the north-western area of the city, with a particular reference to the Azienda Ospedaliera Villa Sofia and CTO, located just in front of the Favorita camp.

For what is concerned with the abuse of drugs and alcohol, some contacts took place in the past with the various Ser.T.s , but no large numbers have ever been recorded. Now, -maybe also considering the changes related to the privatisation of the social-medical structures and the growing difficulty in supplying social-medical performance to foreigners who haven’t got papers in order with the immigration laws, and then not able to show all necessary credits to gain access to the performance of the Health National Service; now as we said, this inflow has become sparser and sparser, tending to disappear in time.

This does not mean that the problem concerning the abuse of alcohol and drugs (whose presence started being of an actual interest because of a sudden increase then followed by a rapid decrease) is not relevant any longer: on the contrary, it looks like it’s been absorbed inside the rule of the nomadic community, sliding towards a "submerged" situation, completely existing inside the community.

Those sporadic inflows to Ser.T.s had been recorded in the past as little clusters, people featuring some degree on kindred one to another, and generally being accompanied by someone belonging to the same familiar cell. Most of the times the request had been forwarded to get a de-intoxication from opium derived drugs since no further help could have been given inside the camp, and often the same people featured problems originating from abuse of alcohol at the same time. According to what we were able to see, the problem in dealing with the use of addicting substances (normally concerning young males) originated from a inevitable conflict with the rules of the community itself and with the authority of the ROM leader; the request for intervention would have usually been forwarded, most of the times, with theatricality by women of the family always present in large numbers (mothers, wives, sisters): but probably those request for intervention, seldom formulated in a explicit ways by the patient managed to show an undefined will to de-intoxicate the young "deviating" male and get him back again in the community. They also hid the general wish to get to social-medical assistance, without being actually able to found a real interface with the medical personnel. The intervention, most of the times, would end, after a rough diagnosis in the absence of any cultural mediation, with a remedy dispensing, or else, seldom, it could be followed by the same request in another time; all treatments headed to the weaning with non substitutive means, and no treatments have ever been accomplished with substitutive drugs (methadone).

All numeric data referring to request for intervention forwarded by nomadic and intervention themselves are just a few ( no more that fifteen) and the number lowered to zero in the last three years. After a brief informal verify with the other Ser.T.s it was possible to draw a very similar situation.

Some critical point were pointed out in time:

The lack of new requests for a assistance by gypsies in the last two years must not be interpreted as an end of any abuse of alcohol and drugs, but as an increase of difficulties to get access to the social-medical structures, due to the semi-clandestinity conditions and the inevitable margination process enhanced by the privatisation of social-medical structures.

It is possible to suppose that the abuse of doping substances and alcohol may develop in a submerged dimension, mostly within the nomadic community, but interfering with the civil society on a wider scale.

If the drug addicted, trying to keep the effect of his addiction "outside the camp", finds himself forced to accomplish any possible action to realise easy and fast gains (in comparison to the actual price of drugs), we could notice the increase of criminal episodes, and dealing of drugs as a remarkable social phenomenon.

If this fact could be recorded, it would be a possible indicator of the use of new drug inside the nomadic community.

To achieve a better definition of some possible directions to follow, and to build an eventual project, it would be convenient to activate some non specific interventions that would allow to:

These measures could define an effective frame, allocating inside of it factual interventions preventing the abuse of doping substances and alcohol, and allowing to project any sort of interventions for those already involved in the abuse of doping substances.

 

INTERVENTION AREAS AND PROPOSABLE CHALLENGES

Unlike all other immigrant groups, main problems of the gypsies towards "Gagč" (locals) are: the scarce (often irrelevant) trust and the deep pride animating these people, who frequently prefer to retire in themselves more than undergo the conditioning of the local social pattern that in Sicily is quite stiff.

To forecast more optimistic future scenarios, we need to face some challenges in consideration of what we said so far. Some guidelines can be summarised as follows:

 

Exploitation of craftsmanship, as well as of tradition related to cooking, art, music, and artistic. This last point is intended to build a positive imago of the gypsy community towards the local society.

 

CONCLUSIONS

In spite of what we said so far, the effective and real condition in which the Palermo’s Rom community lives today are extensively not known, and this not only because of what we tried to expose.

Everyone may notice the lack of information about the real dimension of the resident community: this depends on the fact the only census data available consist of the records held by the Foreigners Office of the Police Department of Palermo, and just relatively to those asking for a stay permission. This report cannot supply any precise data bout a phenomenon interesting also the nearest town of Termini Imerese and Bagheria.

To get access to the data mentioned above we will try to obtain a special permission granted by the Police Department, to update very soon this research, and make it, in time, a proper channel to feed information about events and facts interesting the interaction and the problems arising in the Rom Community.

Palermo, June 14th 1999

Alessio Ajovalasit. Graduated in Scienze Politiche, co-operator, on a freelance basis at the FENICE cooperativa sociale a r.l.

Maurizio Crispi. Psychiatrist, Head of Ser.T. Distretto Sanitario n.13, Palermo

 

The making of this report has been possible thanks to the precious help granted by Ms. Angela Ravidą, Social Assistant and Co-ordinator at U.S.S.M. (Bureau for Social Services of the Ministry of Justice.)

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 Laws

For all regulations concerning camps :

Education, and school:

Essays and surveys:

Stas’ Gawronsky, Guida al volontariato, Einaudi Editore,

A. Dal Lago Non persone. L’esclusione dei migranti in una societą globale, Feltrinelli

L. Piasere Comunitą girovaghe, comunitą zingare, Liguori

 

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