This workshop brings together scholars and advocates to interrogate the spatial politics and bewildering effects of state initiatives experienced by mobile peoples in two very different contexts. In the first case, Stefania Pontradolfo (University of Verona) and Marco Solimene (University of Iceland) examine the contradictory effects and sedentist bias of social cohesion policies targeting Roma and Sinti groups in Italy. In the second case, Jeremie Gilbert (University of Roehampton) and Yannick Ndoinyo (University of Oxford) discuss how the spatial policies of conservation, usually based on forms of enclosure, clash with mobile peoples’ cultural landscapes and place identities. Jeremie Gilbert presents how new legal frameworks and policies could support a much more harmonious relationship between mobility and nature conservation. This workshop contributes to discussions on spatial politics, rights to mobility in contemporary environmental governance and development initiatives.

Registered residence and sedentist bias: Italian social cohesion policies for Roma and Sinti

By Stefania Pontradolfo (University of Verona) and Marco Solimene (University of Iceland)
Our contribution focuses on the issue of sedentist bias in development by exploring nuances and contradictions in local social cohesion policies that target Roma and Sinti in Italy. Building on ethnographic case-studies, we reflect on registered residence, an administrative device that is used as a selective tool for granting access to citizenship rights. We thus argue that the implementation of redistribution and recognition policies in Italy can paradoxically contribute to the exclusion and marginalization of mobile peoples in Italy. This is due to a sedentist framework in which the mechanism of registered residence functions as a bureaucratic trap for many Roma and Sinti and also prompts a series of more implicit biases in local social policies.

Conservation Policies, Protected Areas and Mobile Peoples

By Jérémie Gilbert (University of Roehampton), with Yannick Ndoinyo (University of Oxford) as discussant
Policies for the conservation of nature and the management of protected areas are often clashing with the rights and livelihoods of local mobile communities. In the name of conservation, many mobile communities cannot anymore practice their traditional forms of mobile livelihood. This is particularly the case for pastoralists and hunter-gathering communities who in recent decades have seen their right to maintain a mobile lifestyle curtain by the establishment of protected areas on their traditional territories. By focusing on recent international declarations and policies and contrasting the situation on the ground faced by several communities, the discussion will explore how the spatial policies of conservation are clashing with mobile peoples, and how new legal frameworks and policies could support a much more harmonious relationship between mobility and nature conservation.