No room for the Roma

One tiny ray of hope for France’s Roma community is seen on the outskirts of Paris where an attempt has been made to integrate the Roma into French life. A government sponsored experiment has seen 25 Roma families located in a series of old prefabricated buildings. Here lodging, healthcare and help in finding employment have been made available with the long-term aim of integrating these residents into French society. But even here, residents are segregated away from other French citizens and to some observers their current lodgings more resemble internment camps where the residents are kept secluded behind real or imaginary walls.

Are there any messages here for us in New Zealand and Australia?

Well, in the first place there is need to respect and protect human diversity in all its shades and to ensure that groups, just because they are ethnically and culturally different, are not excluded from full involvement in everyday life as we know it.

In the second, we should not fall victim to populist pressure citing security and public order issues for immigration controls to protect our borders from imagined refugee and migrant hordes.