Identity Security in Romania from Concept to Implementation in the Public Policies of Integration of Minorities / Roma Population

Introduction

Any debate about security / insecurity should leave the social perception of risk if we admit that security / insecurity is a construction socially massive perceptions. For a sociological approach, common knowledge, responsible for how various risks are decrypted, is encapsulated in social representations specific to a social group. In the view of security studies, social representations to which sociology refers are conceptualized as a security imaginary, a concept that has both a formal and an informal dimension. From a formal point of view, the security imagination refers to the elite's perception of the position of a state in the distribution of world power.This perception, strongly influenced by the experience of statehood, is reflected in the security culture of a state, through which exploration can draw conclusions about the doxes (the automatism of thought) interleaved in the perception of the elite, which strongly influence the geostrategic decision in a state. From an informal point of view, the security imagination focuses on how an ethno-religious group is in the state, as well as on interactions with other ethno-religious groups on the territory of a State or outside that State. The two levels of security imagery are fundamental components of any collective identity. The central endorsement of the article is that identity security can be studied either formally, focusing on strategic narratives that reveal the elite's security imagination, or from an informal point of view, in order to highlight the perceptions of an ethno-religious group in relation to its relative power. More specifically, studying identity security as an informal security imaginary involves shifting the emphasis from the security policy area and security discourse to day-to-day or day-to-day security, starting from the premise that security is "a social construct based on certain connections, emotions, trust and intimacy.

Theoretical and Methodological Aspects

In the framework of this subchapter, I will present the minorities, ethnicity, integration and social integration notions and the main sources regarding etnicity and the main models of integration, pluralism / multiculturalism, assimilation, marginalization, formal inclusion.

Ethnic Minority and Ethnicity. The Main Currents of Ethnicity.

Ethnicity has been defined as: "the social group a person belongs to, and either identifies with or is identified with by others, as a result of a mix of cultural and other factors including language, diet, religion, ancestry and physical features traditionally associated with race" (Bhopal, 2004, p. 442).

It is important to make a distinction between the concepts of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’. Race is a socially meaningful category of people who share biologically transmitted traits that are obvious and considered important. In contrast to the idea of race, ethnicity simply means a shared cultural heritage (Goodfriend, 2010, p. 19).

Ethnic minorities are people with ethnic origins different from the majority of the public. People of first, second or later generations, who can be distinguished from the majority of people living in a specific country or region, through their color of skin, family names, specific habits or behavior and who can be identified as a minority in regard to most inhabitants of a specific country. Ethnic minority covers a wide range of people in certain situations: historical national minorities, migrants, immigrant workers, refugees and asylum seekers or people from former colonies and people with trans-national identities.

In the european area, "ethnicity" is not perceived like a synonymous of ”ethnic minority”, but as a determinant element of the nation¹.

Making an inventory of the main definition and concepts regarding ethnicity, there are four main theoretical approaches that underpin the study of ethnicity. These are primordialism, instrumentalism, materialism and constructivism.

The theory of Primordialism, in relation to ethnicity, argues that "ethnic groups and nationalities exist because there are traditions of belief and action towards primordial objects such as biological factors and especially territorial location".²

This argument relies on a concept of kinship, where members of an ethnic group feel they share characteristics, origins or sometimes even a blood relationship. "Primordialism assumes ethnic identity as fixed, once it is constructed".³

Instrumentalist theory is based on the idea that national identity, nationalism and ethnicity were created by elites and that ethnicity is a phenomenon that can be changed, built or even manipulated to achieve economic benefits and to achieve certain political goals. According to the Elite Theory, the leaders of a modern state use and manipulate the perception of ethnic identity in order to promote their own goals and to maintain the power. Thus, ethnicity, according to this approach, is determined by the struggle of elites within a particular entity, in a certain political and economic context. ⁴. In line with this concept, ethnic groups are considered to be policy creations, created and manipulated by elites' culture to gain access to power and resources.

Materialist approaches to ethnicity are relatively underdeveloped in the literature. 'Crude' Marxist theories, including the work of Michael Hechter (1978), view ethnicity as an epiphenomenon, or a result, of class relations. These crude Marxist theories also suggest that violence between ethnically aligned groups is the result of economic inequalities and elite exploitation. The claims of crude Marxists received heavy empirical criticism from a wide range of scholars. It is now generally 2002). Acknowledged that ethnicity is not a product of class relations and that there is no one-to-one relationship between the two categories.

Constructivist theory is based on the idea that ethnicity is a constantly changing phenomenon, not being a basic human condition. The supporters of this trend claim that "ethnic groups are only products of social-human interaction, maintained only to the extent that they are sustained in quality of social constructs. The idea of ​​ethnicity serves as an umbrella for different communities because individuals as part of an ethnic group can obtain additional rights.⁵

The existence of these notions regarding the concepts of "ethnicity" and "ethnicity" allows for a multidimensional interpretation of these enormous enomens. The approach through the three conceptual trends allows a better structure of the main theoretical perceptions. Thus, according to primordialist theory, ethnicity is determined at birth and remains unchanged throughout life. Instrumentalist theory addresses ethnicity as a phenomenon based on symbols and myths that is exploited by leaders for the purposes of pragmatics and for achieving their own interests. The third approach is illustrated by the constructivist theory, which claims that ethnic identity is something that people "build" in specific social and historical contexts to promote their own interests, ethnicity being fluid and subjective. Therefore, each of these currents shows that ethnicity and ethnicity remain basic elements in the constitution of the nation-state.

Integration. Social Integration

Integration was first studied by Park and Burgess in 1921 through the concept of assimilation. They defined it as "a process of interpenetration and fusion in which persons and groups acquire the memories, sentiments, and attitude of other persons and groups and, by sharing their experience and history, are incorporated with them in a common cultural life."⁶ While some scholars offered an assimilation theory, arguing that immigrants would be assimilated into the host society economically, socially and culturally over successive generations, others developed a multiculturalism theory, anticipating that immigrants could maintain their ethnic identities through the integration process to shape the host society with a diversified cultural heritage. Extending from the assimilation theory, a third group of scholars proposed a segmented integration theory, stressing that different groups of migrants might follow distinct trajectories towards upward or downward mobility on different dimensions, depending on their individual, contextual and structural factors.

Social integration is a complex idea, which means different things to different people. To some, it is a positive goal, implying equal opportunities and rights for all human beings. In this case, becoming more integrated implies improving life chances. To others, however, increasing integration may conjure up the image of an unwanted imposition of conformity. And, to still others, the term in itself does not necessarily imply a desirable or undesirable state at all. It is simply a way of describing the established patterns of human relations in any given society. Thus, in the latter view, one pattern of social integration may provide a more prosperous, just or humane context for human beings than another; but it is also possible for one pattern of social integration to be markedly different from another without being either better or worse.

Sociological Theories of Social Integration

The rapport of an individual, as social actor and society, as intrinsection order, also affirms the role of the individual actor and the intriguing statesman of the intrinsection order. Social theorist moves between the order of the divine, on the theme of integrating the individual in a rallied state in the institutions through the "effector of the soldier" of the establishment / instilance of the analysis. Autors give the alliance a complete move, indicating that they have the ability to operate / distribute the infrastructure in a sustainable manner, allied to the breakaway.

Functionalist sociologists

As a theoretical orientation of a traditionalist approach to social phenomena, functionalist analysis was mainly grounded in the work of American sociologists (B.Μalinоwѕki, Radϲliffе-Brоwn) with a broad development in the concept of American functionalist structuralism represented by T. Parѕоnѕ și R.Κ. Μеrtоn.

Constructivist sociologist

The analysis of the type of struggle that has been achieved in the protection of the earth has given rise to an individual capable of dispersal in the retreatment, endeavoring and rhetoric of the rulluri, of the extraordinary procession of the eu and the univier. They involve the idea that the individual and the group to be integrated are equally actors and agents of action, actors capable of selecting to spawn to produce and communicate information in the practical form so they become transmitters and simple recipients of the message. Social actors are considerated capabile of thinking, always aware of what they are doing, free to pots for an beheivior or another.

Main Social Integration Models

Human rights always refer to relationships between members of a social group. These are perceived as a command that tells what is ”normal” what is expected in relationships he state of "normality" is characteristic of historical and cultural variations. Modern law describes the relationships and cooperative behavior of individuals living in a community, group. These relationships ensure the stability and continuity of the community and are therefore "fixed" and transmitted from one generation to the next through different forms of collective social memory: custom or tradition, knowledge, values ​​and ideologies, jurisprudence, customs, moral-legal norms, interpretation. By favoring ommunity groups and different cultural traditions, different phenomena of regional integration and globalization transform sociological and anthropological analysis into direct sources of law. States that promote the minority rights of the minorities can enjoy several advantages, such as: effective assumption of values, such as recognition and pluralism, in terms of institutional practices; ethno-linguistic accommodation of ethno-linguistic minorities involving an increase in internal political stability, increasing political rating on the international arena in terms of assessing the liberal nature of democracy, increasing citizens' trust in the various institutions of local or central administrations; a reduction in the situations of subjective discrimination

Μultiсulturaliѕm

In the multiculturalism the cultures, races, and ethnicities, particularly those of minority groups, deserve special acknowledgement of their differences within a dominant political culture.That acknowledgement can take the forms of recognition of contributions to the cultural life of the political community as a whole, a demand for special protection under the law for certain cultural groups, or autonomous rights of governance for certain cultures. Multiculturalism is both a response to the fact of cultural pluralism in modern democracies and a way of compensating cultural groups for past exclusion, discrimination, and oppression. Most modern democracies comprise members with diverse cultural viewpoints, practices, and contributions. Many minority cultural groups have experienced exclusion or the denigration of their contributions and identities in the past. Multiculturalism seeks the inclusion of the views and contributions of diverse members of society while maintaining respect for their differences and withholding the demand for their assimilation into the dominant culture. Some more-radical multicultural theorists have claimed that some cultural groups need more than recognition to ensure the integrity and maintenance of their distinct identities and contributions. In addition to individual equal rights, some have advocated for special group rights and autonomous governance for certain cultural groups. Because the continued existence of protected minority cultures ultimately contributes to the good of all and the enrichment of the dominant culture, those theorists have argued that the preserving of cultures that cannot withstand the pressures to assimilate into a dominant culture can be given preference over the usual norm of equal rights for all. Multiculturalism is closely associated with identity politics, or political and social movements that have group identity as the basis of their formation and the focus of their political action. Those movements attempt to further the interests of their group members and force issues important to their group members into the public sphere. In contrast to multiculturalism, identity politics movements are based on the shared identities of participants rather than on a specifically shared culture. However, both identity politics and multiculturalism have in common the demand for recognition and a redress for past inequities. Multiculturalism raises important questions for citizens, public administrators, and political leaders. By asking for recognition of and respect for cultural differences, multiculturalism provides one possible response to the question of how to increase the participation of previously oppressed groups.

Pluralism

Pluralism assumes that diversity is beneficial to society and that autonomy should be enjoyed by disparate functional or cultural groups within a society, including religious groups, trade unions, professional organizations, and ethnic minorities. Arend Lijphart considers that only a certain form of democracy, the consociational one, makes it possible to maintain democracy in a plural society.In such a democracy, "the centrifugal tendencies inherent in a plural society are neutralized by the attitudes and cooperative behavior of the leaders of different segments of the population." In modern democratic society, the connection between people is a political one. Living together does not mean sharing the same religion, culture, or obeying with the same authorities, but assuming to be a citizen of the same political organization "Citizenship is the source of social bonding." Only citizens of a democratic nation see their political rights fully recognized.

Marginalization

Marginalization is the process of pushing a particular group or groups of people to the edge of society by not allowing them an active voice, identity, or place in it. Through both direct and indirect processes, marginalized groups may be reletated to a secondary position or made to feel as if they are less important than those who hold more power or privilege in society. Individuals and groups can be marginalized on the basis of multiple aspects of their identity, including but not limited to: race, gender or gender identity, ability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, sexuality, age, and/or religion. Some individuals identify with multiple marginalized groups, and may experience further marginalization as a result of their intersecting identities. Gerry Roggers has identified categories or patterns of social exclusion present in various definitions, with the statement that their use varies depending on the regional specificity, ie the continent where the definition is being developed. The top five categories are marginalization from goods and services, the labor market, land ownership, security and human rights. The sixth category is more vaguely formulated, namely the marginalization / exclusion relationship - economic and social development strategies and refers to the social costs of the social adjustment programs. In Romania, the definition proposed in the Social Policy Dictionary refers primarily to the failure to fully achieve citizens' rights, both due to structural causes of socio-economic nature and individual causes.

Asimilation

Assimilation is the one-way process by which a group receives, internalizes and shares values, norms and patterns of behavior or lifestyles specific to another group they are in contact with, the process of which the first group is absorbed in the dominant culture and its cultural identity is replaced by that of the dominant group.

Social inclusion

Social inclusion is the process of improving the terms on which individuals and groups take part in society—improving the ability, opportunity, and dignity of those disadvantaged on the basis of their identity. An inclusive society should be based on mutual respect and solidarity, with equal opportunities and decent living standards for all - where diversity is seen as a source of strength and not as a divider. In every country, certain groups—whether migrants or minorities—confront barriers that prevent them from fully participating in their nation’s political, economic, and social life. These groups are excluded through a number of practices ranging from stereotypes, stigmas, and superstitions based on gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity, or disability status. Such practices can rob them of dignity, security, and the opportunity to lead a better life. There is a moral imperative to address social exclusion. Left unaddressed, exclusion of disadvantaged groups can also be costly. And the costs—whether social, political, or economic—are likely to be substantial. One study found that exclusion of the ethnic minority Roma cost Romania 887 million euros in lost productivity. In addition, exclusion also has damaging consequences for human capital development.

Citizenship

Citizenship is the status of a person recognized under the custom or law as being a legal member of a sovereign state or belonging to a nation. A person may have multiple citizenships. A person who does not have citizenship of any state is said to be stateless, while one who lives on state borders whose territorial status is uncertain is a border-lander. Nationality is often used as a synonym for citizenship in English⁷ – notably in international law – although the term is sometimes understood as denoting a person's membership of a nation (a large ethnic group).[3] In some countries, e.g. the United States, the United Kingdom, nationality and citizenship can have different meanings (for more information, see Nationality versus citizenship).

Comparing the models of integration presented above under the legal (citizenship), social, religious aspects the following occurred:

Integration Public Policies of Minorities / Ethnic Groups from the Perspective of the Three Main Institutions of Integration, Namely Education, Employment and Civic Participation.

Romania has created the legal framework to guarantee and secure the rights of national and ethnic minorities, the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, adopted by the Council of Europe, being ratified since 1995. Since 1993, based on the Copenhagen criteria, Romania has started the preparations to join NATO and the EU. That socio-political context has allowed the politics of the Government to be reoriented towards various categories of population that were severely affected by the transition from the planned economy to the market economy, for example the Roma minority. The Roma minority from Romania is the most exposed to the risks of social exclusion, is discriminated and has an unequal access to education, to the labor market, to decent housing conditions, to social and health services. Mainly influenced by the evolution of the Romanian and international political scene, the method of approaching the Roma minority was put into legislative and institutional practice and meant the enacting of some solutions, such as: the set up of some institutions to represent the Roma minority and to observe their rights, the drafting of some public policies explicitly for the Roma or implicitly for the vulnerable groups, attracting and managing funds from the European Commission, World Bank, BIRD and other international organizations. In the period 2001-2011 several public policies were drafted, where the Roma represented the target group (targeting). (ex. The national strategies for the Roma from the year 2001 and 2011, the Inclusion Decade).

Education

The access to education for all members of society irrespective of their psycho-physical, intellectual, socio-economic, family, ethnic or religious particularities is a priority objective for all education systems in most countries, but none can demonstrate that it has managed to meet.In Romania, the most affected category of population are the children from the rural areas, especially the Roma children. The rate of kindergarten enrollment of the Roma children is 40% smaller than the rate of the majority population⁸. 44% of Roma children aged between 7-11 years present a risk of school dropout⁹. In 2012, approximately 400.000 Roma children from primary school were not going to school on a regular basis¹⁰. Over 75% of Roma children do not graduate from gymnasium¹¹. Two of ten Roma children do not go to school, and the most frequently reason invoked by the parents is related to the lack of financial resources. One of six Roma parents explains the weak participation of the children in schools through ethnical discrimination.¹² The schools do not have efficient strategies to prevent the dropout phenomenon, they take action only when it is already too late and also, in the moment when the share of Roma children in schools is growing there is the occurrence of a segregation phenomenon at the class level, accompanied by a decrease in the quality of education and of the material endowments of the respective institution.

The Ministry of National Education (MEN) has identified in the Roma inclusion strategy in 2011 a set of 11 measures that refer to including the preschool and the school aged children in some form of education, reducing the absenteeism in the pre-university education, at the same time with the measures that ensure the quality of the education with an emphasize on the management of the inclusive education. The disaggregation, non-discrimination, the continuation of the affirmative measures and the monitoring of the educational system structures would respond to the indicator of the 2020 Strategy that has as objective to include until the year 2020 all the children in the education system.

Alongside the measures from the 2011 Roma strategy, other measures to promote the participation of the children in schools, applied according to the Law of education, are as follows:summer camps for the children aged between 3-6 years old; The second chance” for those who exceeded the school age; ”School after school” for the pupils included in the primary education;„Functional teaching”;„Bagel and milk” for preschool and school children;Scholarships for high school students;Affirmative measures for high school and university students;The network of inspectors, professor and teachers for the Romani language and the history of the Roma people;Summer schools for the Romani language;School contests for the Romani language;Distance learning;The school mediatorThe school counselor and assistant; Scholarships for the Roma students (in general).

Employment

Along with the process of joining the European Union, Romania has adopted strategies and measures to ensure the achievement of the first objective of the European Employment Strategy.The Roma people from Romania have a reduced participation on the official labor market, but have a high participation on the unofficial labor market, without social security mechanisms. The INS data from 2002 are showing that ¹³the employment rate was 36%, while other 36% were looking for a job and 28% were inactive (in comparison with an employment rate of 58%, and an unemployment rate of 7,7%, at national level). Regarding the situation of the unemployed people and of the people looking for a job, the share of Roma unemployed people is 21%.¹⁴ As employed persons, the Roma work on their own, only 10-15% of them are wage workers. Of these, most of them have no formal qualification, they either carry out activities that do not require a qualification, for example cleaning lady, janitor, garbage man or park worker. Per total, of the employed population, the young Roma of 15 years and over, 38% work as unqualified workers, 32% hold qualified jobs (workers, salespersons), 9% work in agriculture and 13% have traditional Roma jobs.¹⁵ The economical activities that the young Roma carry out are mostly temporarily, seasonal or occasional, fact that indicates a massive underemployment at the level of this population category.

Part of the Roma inclusion strategy from 2011 Ministry of Labor, Family, Social Protection and Elderly has enacted 22 measures such as active measures, according to Law nr. 76/2002 regarding the insurance system for unemployment and the incentives for employment, updated (information, counseling, qualification courses) and measures in the field of social economy (the law project on social economy is in the process of being approved) for developing of businesses, setting up SME, schemes for micro-grants and activities that produce income, apprenticeships and tutorships, job opportunities for women based on flexicutity, including partnerships between the MMFPSPV through its local structures and the relevant players on the labor market.

Civic participation

The representation of ethnic minorities is an important mechanism for accommodating diversity at national level. Active participation in political decisions, especially in areas that concern them directly, is one of the essential rights of persons belonging to national minorities. This principle is also enshrined in the most important international treaty on minorities, the Framework Convention for the Protection of Minorities.Romania ensures the participation of national minorities in the decision-making process that does not otherwise represent. This mechanism was considered to have mainly symbolic value because it offers the possibility of representing the National Minorities in the Parliament.¹⁶

The Theory of Identitare Security

The concept of social security belongs to the constructivist trend (current ethnicity is a phenomenon of continuous development, built in the day-to-day life with a lifelong manifestation) and was developed in the early 80's, starting with the redefinition of security by some institutes for example COPRI - Copenhagen.
In the paper "Security: a new framework of analysis, Buzan et all" delimitated state security in 5 distinct sectors, conceptualized around objects and actors (military, environmental, economic, social and political).
Societal security is influenced by the other four sectors of state security (the military which concerns the dual interaction of the state of offensive and defensive army capability, a policy aimed at organizational stability of states, governing systems and ideologies that legitimize them, economic regarding access to resources, finances and markets, necessary to support the state at an acceptable level of welfare and power, environment that refers to the maintenance of local and world biosphere as the essential support on which all human actions depend) but does not overlap with them.
Social security refers to the survival of a community as a cohesive unit; his referent object is "large scale collective identities that can operate independently of the state".

Societal security is concerned with the capacity to support traditional language, culture, identity, cultural and religious customs within acceptable acceptable conditions.

According to Buzan, "The organizational concept of the social sector is identity. Societal insecurity exists when communities of any kind are defining an evolution or potential as a threat to their survival as community [entities].
Social insecurity occurs when "a society fears that it will not be able to live as such" and comes from:

• Migration: The influx of people will "overcome or dilute" the identity of a group, the need to define Britishness;

• Vertical competition: Integration of a group into a wider organization, Euroscepticism in terms of EU integration, national-separatist claims;

• Horizontal competition: The group is forced to integrate more influential identities into their own identities, minority groups in a country.

The first researcher to use the term identity identity for the first time is Barry Buzan in 1994 in his work "Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe" with reference to "collectives and their identity". According to him, identity security emerged as a result of interethnic conflicts in the 1990s in the former socialist countries, the states of East Africa and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and Cauza. This term of identity security (social security) referred to "the ability of a society to maintain its essential character in a context of uncertainty and real or potential threats" and referred to the threats that may arise in the collective identity of social groups large, from peoples and nations to civilizations.
Ole Waever's identity security (social security) refers to "preserving, in acceptable conditions, the traditional patterns of language, culture, association, and national, religious, and habitual identity." Thus, we can say that social security refers to situations where companies perceive a threat to identity.

Conclusion

Regarding the situation of Romania, though, during the two decades of transition to a democrathic regime, the responsibility of the Romanian citizen has come to be pursued with minority integration (wishing to ensure the identity security for them), adopting 200 dectrets by setting up institutions to deal in the areas of minority inclusion and allocating funding to support an organization that considers the role of the intrusional civil society to be more effective is still deficient in this area. The dialogue between all the targeted actors that would be needed to achieve these objectives would ensure the settlement of the national minority regime in Romania on the basis of solid consensus and social acceptance, preventing the risks of a vulnerability that could demolish in the event of political changes an important part of the achievements so far. The highlighted measures involve effort, patience and costs but would certainly contribute to strengthening a tolerant interethnic climate based on acceptance, mutual respect and interethnic co-operation in Romania. The desideratum at the European Union level regarding ethnic integration is the further development of the objectives set in 2000: increasing the number and quality of jobs, developing flexibility and security in the context of a changing working environment, modernizing social protection, promoting gender equality, combating poverty, discrimination and social exclusion.

References