The Roms, an authentic globalised population

The journalist Antoine Maurice ponders the history of Romany people and their way of life. "Their way of life reposes on a highly structured clannish organisation that crosses borders and justice systems. Some characteristics are as limiting as their precarious, nomadic rag'n'bone status. In what is a transitional phase for Europe, plunged at once in historical grouping and 'deterretorialising' globalisation, traveller communities express both archaic and the most modern of European culture. Archaic, because of their minority enclosure. At the same time the Tzigans inhabit the music, languages, cultures and religions of Europe. Lacking a national aspiration of their own, they are able to slip, like genuine globalized people, into a number of them without ever losing their Tzigan identity."

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