QUESTO CAMPO FA SCHIFO Un'etnografia dell'adolescenza rom fra campo-nomadi, periferia urbana e scenari globali

Pictures of Roma youngsters at the bus stop or on the subway represent one of the imagines through which the idea of “dangerous gypsies” or “the gypsy problem” has been created and spread in Rome as in many other European metropolis. At the same time, western rhetorics and practices based on children's rights portray the same Roma youngsters as victims: victims of the Roma culture in which their rights and desires are not considered and their exploitation legitimized; victims of the urban blight of the nomad camp where they are forced to live. This ethnographic research, carried out in a nomad camp located in the Magliana neighborhood in the outskirt of Rome, aim at challenging these opposite but complementary representations, describing the every day life of a group of Roma, the places where they life, where their dreams, chances and restrictions grow up and are negotiated. These Roma youngsters get in touch and experiment the comparison with Italians and foreigners of the same age attending the schools, the streets, the cathedrals of consumption located in the outskirt of the city and virtually in the social networks. Despite these experiences and the transformations they could inspire, youngsters them selves tend to reaffirm a stricter version of the “honor and blame” moral code, the set of traditional social rules defining gender and generational proper behaviors, from dress code to talk license. Ethnographic data show that the nomad camp scenario increases the strength of the “honor and blame” moral code because parents and relatives can easily monitor each single choice of the the youngsters, both within the nomad camp, a separated area whose inhabitants belongs to a limited number of families coming from a few cities in South West of Romania, and outside of it. Gossiping is one of the main tool of social control: tales and moral judgments about youngsters behaviors move within the containers of the nomad camp but also move through transnational connections reaching relatives in Romania, Belgium or United States. Changes, new desires and forbidden love affairs secretly grow up between student's desks, shops windows or in the back of the containers, sometimes overlapping boundaries between Roma and gagè, or between diverse groups of Roma. But all of these experiences are restricted in a narrow stage of the life-course of the youngsters, because their transition to adulthood is exclusively managed in a limited set of relations, the one connecting nomad camp inhabitants and their transnational families, with any physic or symbolic root in the city or in the neighborhood.

I giovani rom sono spesso ritratti come coloro che soffrono le condizioni di degrado nei campi- nomadi, vittime di una “cultura” naturalmente criminogena che, nell'urgenza di renderli fonti di reddito, non ne rispetterebbe diritti e desideri. Alle fermate degli autobus o sui vagoni della metropolitana essi diventano così uno dei simboli della pericolosità associata agli “zingari”. L'etnografia, costruita frequentando per due anni un gruppo di giovani che vive in un campo- nomadi nel quartiere Magliana a Roma, si propone di sfidare tali rappresentazioni stereotipate, documentando la loro vita quotidiana e dando voce ai sogni e alle limitazioni che caratterizzano la loro crescita. La transizione verso l'adultità è segnata dal complesso rapporto con i genitori e le norme sociali tradizionali improntate ai valori della “vergogna” e dell'onore che nello spazio chiuso e separato del campo-nomadi vengono rinforzati dal controllo costante dei co-residenti. Al contempo i giovani sperimentano il confronto con i coetanei gagè nelle aule di scuola, di fronte alle vetrine e nelle cattedrali del divertimento che costellano la periferia romana e nelle relazioni virtuali dei social network. Mentre fra i container si nascondono desideri e storie d'amore clandestine, il futuro di questi giovani si costruisce in uno spazio transnazionale che attraverso network comunitari li avvicina ad altre metropoli europee e agli Stati Uniti, limitando le possibilità di radicamento a Roma entro il confine del campo-nomadi.