The making of a 'risk population'

This paper critically examines the processes of categorisation of Roma migrants in Glasgow, contributing to debates on the (unsuccessful) attempts of the EU and individual European states to tackle the social exclusion of various Roma populations living in Europe. Hitherto little attention has been paid to how measures aimed at improving the lives of Roma actually ‘work’ in practice, especially in the context of more recent Roma migration within Europe. Moreover, the role that ethnicity plays ‘on the ground’ has often been overlooked or taken for granted in the relevant literature. Based on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork with Czech- and Slovak-speaking migrants, including Roma, in Glasgow in 2012, this paper aims to address this gap in the literature. Adopting a boundary-making perspective on ethnicity to analyse interactions in institutionalised settings, it traces and discusses various practices through which ‘the Roma’ were constructed as ‘a risk population’ in the city