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Johan Leman, 26 November 2023

I don’t know who is the most discriminated community in Belgium. There is evidence that black skin color is a marker for major discrimination. Others will point to Islamophobia. Still others will say that the Roma are by far the most discriminated against and refer to antiziganism, with the Travelers in the latter category being the least accepted.

From Foyer we manage a large number of reference addresses for caravan residents and we have regular contact with them, for example when those people come to collect their correspondence. But we have more contact with those who are called the sedentary Roma. Contrary to popular belief, this is far from a homogeneous community. At Foyer we mainly have contact with Roma from Romania (who already consist of different communities), from Bulgaria and also the Doms from Syria. These people are all Roma, but there are enormous differences between them.

What we can say, however, is that it is very rewarding to work with them. There are still problems, for example with girls having to drop out of education too quickly, but what is clear is that young people want to move forward and succeed in life. They do this in the most normal way, like everyone else: by studying and then finding a job. What a work with Roma must do above all is to help remove the obstacles that can stand in the way of this, both among them and in society. It’s that simple. And that doesn’t require stigmatization.

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