Almost 30 years have passed since state-socialism came to an end and several scholars sought to establish how the Romanian housing market has unfolded within a changing economic context and a strongly altered welfare system. This paper considers the most disadvantaged postsocialist groups in Romanian society and aims to advance our understanding of the housing situation in newly concentrated poor urban spaces. In developing such analysis, this article draws on local insights from Ferentari, a neighborhood in Bucharest where most residents I spoke saw a gradual degradation of their dwelling and living environment and do not expect any improvement soon. Not surprisingly, a strong indifference towards present-day politics and a potentially better and more inclusive space has colonized most minds. By studying their housing conditions and socioeconomic situation this article aims to illuminate the sudden emergence and diverse character of Romania’s underprivileged neighborhoods: the modern mahalas.

Postsocialist urban development is partially characterised by housing deterioration and the perpetual overrepresentation of Romanian Roma in substandard dwellings. These phenomena are particularly noticeable in the margins of larger Romanian cities. Many poor Romanians found, in urban peripheries, a last resort during a period of economic crisis and housing shortages. In the meantime, public policy and urban planning have focused on maintaining ‘collective order’ and accommodating the wishes of the ‘decently’ housed residents of the city. This is certainly the case in Bucharest, where squatters and homeless people have been expelled from central districts and where the same privileged districts receive substantially more attention. This collective order is apparently deemed more important than the needs of marginalised groups in Romanian society. This article examines how urban marginality is addressed at the municipal level and how ‘parsimonious’ public intervention in poor residential areas is justified. In doing so, I highlight the roles of postsocialist devolution, inadequate use of EU and national funds, and reviving racialisation in reproducing housing poverty.

Trying to trace a continuous link in time and space, and from a qualitative ethnographic and multi-sited approach to housing and racialised poverty, we analyse the narratives of fifteen Romanian Roma begging outside stores in Uppsala’s inner-city district. The narratives from Uppsala reveal precarious living and housing conditions in Romania. Beggars come to Sweden for more income, but there they are also exposed to homelessness, harsh weather conditions, racism and discrimination. Using a combination of political economy approach for the analysis of housing, with a postcolonial approach to migratory patterns of the racialised and impoverished Roma in Europe/Sweden, we reflect on two main topics: Firstly, while beggars are homeless in Uppsala, paradoxically they are often homeowners in Romania, although their housing conditions are precarious in both places. Secondly, we discuss the relationship between racialisation and the precarious living and housing conditions observed among the Romanian Roma. Grounding our analysis in the empirical material we argue that the very idea of homeownership as a good investment and a more convenient form of tenure than rental housing must be especially disputed in this context. We therefore propose the term fallacious homeownership, to characterise the precariousness of life among these poor and racialised homeowners. This article merges the interests of urban and housing researchers with those from the postcolonial tradition.

This article examines the community-led housing practices of two related Boyash-Roma communities in Argentina and Romania. The Argentinean case introduces the story of the Ludar in the Greater Buenos Aires Region, a Romanian-speaking sub-group of the Roma, who likely arrived here between 1880 and 1900. Throughout Argentina, most of the Ludar are involved in street vending. The second case concerns the Roma communities of the Rudari from Vâlcea County in Romania, who travel to Sweden primarily to beg. Although the cases seem unrelated, they demonstrate how close engagement with Roma and their socioeconomic mobility allows experimental comparisons of informality and urban development in various parts of world. While their mobile earning strategies are contested by authorities, they enable many to secure a feeling of belonging in a post-crisis context, characterised by rampant racism, greatly restricted welfare provision and increasingly constrained mobility. The newly emerging homes are understood as spaces of hope and dignity and the coping strategies as processes meant to unmake precarity. In this way, the article contributes to an emerging scholarship of Roma resistance, while informing broader contestations of urban marginality.