On February 20, 1856, the last Roma slaves in the Romanian Principalities were freed by a law adopted by Prince Barbu Știrbei. While this event is celebrated as a moment of emancipation and was a progressive historical process at the time, we must remain grounded in the reality that demonstrates how the abolition of slavery represented a reconfiguration of exploitative relations. The forced integration of former Roma slaves into an emerging capitalist economy ensured the continuation of a subordinate status, and racialization mechanisms were instrumentalized to consolidate class domination. This is not to say that the abolition of slavery was not a progressive step at the time. But as we shall see, the underlying causes of the exploitation of the Roma people remain.
In the present, 169 years after the formal abolition of slavery, Roma workers remain among the most marginalized laborers in the Romanian economy. Moreover, a significant number of Roma are deliberately pushed into the reserve army of labor by the deeply racist superstructure of European states, serving capital’s need to lower the cost of labor for all workers. The structural phenomena of capitalism—expropriation, exploitation, and segregation—persist, while the racialization of labor remains a central mechanism for maintaining bourgeois social and economic order.
Who Benefited from Emancipation?
In the first half of the 19th century, Romanian society was undergoing a process of feudal decomposition and the emergence of capitalism. While slavery had previously been necessary for accumulation, it had become an obstacle to this transformation as the Romanian Principalities entered the sphere of influence of emerging Western capital. The great European powers, especially England and France, exerted pressure for the abolition of slavery, not out of altruism, but to facilitate the circulation of labor and the expansion of commercial relations. The same phenomenon was observed elsewhere, such as the abolition of serfdom in Russia in 1861, where integration into the world market accelerated the end of servile labor systems.
Under feudalism, slavery and serfdom had an economic rationale, as production was organized based on land ownership and bound laborers. However, as capitalism began to penetrate the Romanian economy, the need for a free labor market arose. Roma slaves could neither be hired nor fired according to market demands, making it difficult to flexibilize and rationalize labor.
Starting in the 1830s–1850s, industrial production centers (factories, workshops, manufacturing activities) began to emerge in the Romanian Principalities. This economy required free workers, who could be paid low wages and integrated into the capitalist production cycle. Roma slaves, legally bound to their owners, could not be part of this process.
Roma Slavery as a Form of Primitive Accumulation
The abolition of Roma slavery in 1856 was not a spontaneous act of humanitarianism by the ruling classes nor a triumph of “moral progress.” Individual and collective acts of Roma resistance succeeded due to economic and political imperatives that made the maintenance of this forced labor system impossible under the new conditions of capitalist development. In this sense, Roma slavery should not be understood solely as a feudal relic, but as a mechanism of primitive accumulation of capital. Abolition did not mark a clear rupture with exploitation but rather a transition from direct ownership of the worker to exploitation mediated by the wage labor market.
In Capital (Vol. 1, Ch. 26), Marx demonstrates that primitive accumulation of capital involves the violent expropriation of a population from its means of subsistence and its reduction to total dependence on capital. Roma slavery functioned precisely in this manner, providing free labor as a source of accumulation. The Romanian ruling classes (boyars, clergy) used enslaved Roma as free labor in agriculture, crafts, transport, and domestic work.
For example:
- The Golescu and Cantacuzino boyar families owned hundreds of Roma slaves who produced tools and goods for the estate, allowing them to avoid dependence on external markets.
- Many Orthodox monasteries, such as Tismana and Neamț, held hundreds of Roma slaves used in agriculture or workshops.
- In some cases, Roma slaves were rented out to other landowners in exchange for fees, demonstrating that slavery was already functioning on proto-capitalist principles.
Unlike serfs, who had the right to use the land they worked, Roma slaves had no access to means of production. Their labor remained primarily in servile work and crafts, unlike Romanian serfs, whose labor was predominantly agricultural. After abolition, former slaves were not given land (which, ironically, had been expropriated from the Orthodox clergy, the main slave-owning institution), nor were they provided with economic resources. This led to the formation of a mass of impoverished workers, who became a reserve labor force for the capitalist economy.
The Double Role of Integration Policies Under Stalinism
After 1945, under the Stalinist model of socialist development, Romania underwent a process of rapid industrialization and urbanization. For the first time in history, Roma—who had previously been economically marginalized—were absorbed into industrial production, construction, and collectivized agriculture.
Being employed in factories, construction sites, and collective farms, they received regular wages and access to social protection—a radical change from the informal economy or occasional work they had relied on before. In the 1970s, thousands of Roma were employed in metalworking factories in Hunedoara, Reșița, and Galați or in machine-building industries in Brașov and Craiova. Through urbanization policies, many Roma families received apartments in workers’ neighborhoods, offering them more stable housing than previous forms of precarious housing (shacks, tents), which had exposed them to cold and disease. The introduction of mandatory schooling also led to a significant increase in Roma literacy rates.
However, these transformations were accompanied by aggressive assimilation policies, through which the state sought to make Roma “invisible” in cultural and ethnic terms. The Ceaușescu regime, in particular, adopted an economic and cultural nationalism that repressed any distinct ethnic identity.
Officially, the state did not recognize a “Roma problem” in terms of cultural and linguistic self-determination. In official censuses, Roma numbers were underreported, and in state discourse, they were classified only as part of the “Romanian working class”. Unlike other minorities (Hungarians, Germans), Roma were denied access to their own educational institutions or cultural publications. Unlike other groups, Roma were not represented in the leadership structures of the Romanian Communist Party. This approach contrasted sharply with that of other workers’ states, including the USSR, where, at least formally, some initiatives existed to promote distinct ethnic identities.
To dismantle the archaic community structures in which Roma were embedded, the state forcibly redistributed the Roma population into urban centers and collectivized villages. In the 1980s, the Ceaușescu regime attempted to erase Roma communities from rural areas, relocating them to workers’ housing blocks in urban centers. Many families were forced to abandon their traditional occupations, and with the collapse of the regime and the restoration of capitalism, these communities found themselves in extreme economic precarity.
Traditional family structures were incompatible with the nuclear family model imposed by the workers’ housing in which they were placed. Thus, for the Roma, the housing provided by the regime came with the imperative of breaking away from the extended family (and all the support structures maintained within it) and accepting the nuclear family model that was specific to the dominant society during the industrial period.
The contradictory legacy of Ceaușescu’s policies—economic integration without cultural self-determination—had disastrous effects after the capitalist restoration. The state-owned factory, which had been a guarantee of minimal economic security, disappeared, and many Roma workers were among the first to be laid off. Many of the state-provided apartments were privatized, and Roma, lacking financial resources, were gradually expelled into precarious housing.
In the absence of a public discourse on the “unity of the working people”, antigypsyism became an open component of national politics in the 1990s.
Racialization of Labor in Contemporary Romanian Capitalism
Racialization of labor has remained an essential method of economic exploitation. Roma workers have been placed in the most precarious sectors of the labor market, excluded from well-paid jobs, and deprived of social protection.
According to the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA, 2021):
- Over 40% of Roma in Romania work in the informal economy, without labor contracts or social security.
- The unemployment rate among Roma is 3-4 times higher than among the majority population.
- Most Roma are employed in low-wage sectors (construction, agriculture, sanitation, recycling).
Numerous investigations reveal that Roma who migrate for work in advanced capitalist countries such as Germany, France, or Italy end up being exploited in sectors such as construction, agriculture, or domestic services, earning wages below the legal minimum and being subjected to intense police repression (Amnesty International, 2020).
In capitalism, there is a structural need to maintain a reserve army of labor—a population of poor, unemployed, or underemployed workers, ready to be absorbed during economic expansion and thrown back into precarity during crises. In Capital, Vol. 1, Ch. 25, Marx explains how this mechanism is essential for keeping wages low and disciplining the working class. In the Romanian context, this role has been disproportionately assigned to the Roma population, who have been systematically marginalized economically and racialized as an “inferior category”.
Structural racism against Roma is not merely a consequence of individual prejudices or a historical accident—it is an economic necessity for maintaining capitalist order.
Why Does the Capitalist Class Have an Interest in Racializing Labor?
The capitalist class does not discriminate against Roma out of irrational prejudice but because it serves their economic interests. The racialization of labor allows for the maintenance of economic conditions favorable to capital accumulation, by ensuring the existence of a cheap, flexible, and easily exploitable workforce.
One of the fundamental mechanisms through which capitalism ensures the suppression of wages is by maintaining a large mass of workers who are either unemployed or forced to accept jobs with miserable pay and no rights. The presence of a group of racialized workers, whose labor is systematically devalued, creates downward pressure on wages for the entire working class.
For example, in construction and agriculture, many employers prefer to hire Roma workers for lower wages and without contracts, knowing that they are more vulnerable to exploitation and less likely to contest these conditions. The consequence is that non-Roma workers are also forced to accept worse working conditions, as they risk being replaced by workers willing to accept lower wages.
Thus, the racialization of labor does not only affect Roma—it affects the entire working class, as it allows employers to lower labor costs for everyone.
Another essential function of racialized labor in capitalism is that it provides a disposable, reserve workforce that can be used as needed. During economic expansions, capitalists hire racialized workers for the lowest wages, but during recessions, they are the first to be laid off.
During the 2008 financial crisis, many Roma workers who had been employed in construction and industry were laid off without severance pay or any form of social security. When the economy began to recover, they were reabsorbed into the labor market under even worse conditions than before. This dynamic is precisely what Marx described in Capital, Vol. 1, where he explains that the reserve army of labor serves as a tool for capitalists to regulate wages and employment conditions.
A key tactic of capitalism to prevent resistance and rebellion is to divide workers into competing groups, based on ethnicity, nationality, or social status. Anti-Roma racism functions as an instrument through which capitalists redirect working-class anger away from the real causes of poverty and exploitation and towards an internal “enemy.”
Thus, instead of organizing to demand better working conditions and wages, non-Roma workers are encouraged to see Roma as “competitors” in the labor market. This type of rhetoric, aggressively promoted by the state, the media, and certain political parties, creates fractures within the working class, weakening its capacity for collective struggle.
For example, in the 1990s, after the dismantling of state industries, many labor unions ignored the specific issues faced by Roma workers. The newly emerging nationalist discourse portrayed Roma as “lazy” or “dependent on social welfare”, rather than as victims of economic restructuring and mass layoffs. By shifting public frustration onto a racialized group, the political elite was able to divert attention from privatization, corruption, and the increasing gap between rich and poor.
The State, the Police, and the Mechanisms of Social Control
Because the state is fundamentally an instrument of class domination, its repressive apparatus—police, courts, prisons—does not exist to protect all citizens equally but to maintain capitalist order and safeguard the collective interests of the bourgeoisie. Given the role of racialization in economic exploitation, the state keeps Roma workers in a constant state of surveillance and repression.
Racial profiling is the practice through which authorities automatically treat Roma individuals as “suspects”, regardless of their actions or social status. This practice has profound consequences for the economic and social mobility of Roma and limits their access to fundamental rights.
According to reports by the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC, 2021):
- Roma are stopped by the police in traffic at a significantly higher rate than the rest of the population, often without justification.
- Random searches and ID checks are disproportionately targeted at Roma individuals, reinforcing the stereotype that they are predisposed to crime.
- Roma are more frequently convicted and receive harsher sentences than non-Roma for similar offenses (Open Society Foundations, 2019).
This state repression does not exist simply out of institutionalized prejudice but plays a fundamental role in controlling the reserve army of labor. By maintaining systematic pressure on Roma communities, the state ensures that they remain in a state of economic precariousness, thus keeping them available for exploitation in low-wage, insecure jobs.
In addition to direct police repression, the state contributes to the economic marginalization of Roma through deliberate policies of spatial and economic segregation.
For example, forced evictions and the relocation of Roma communities to segregated areas have been a systematic practice in post-Stalinist Romania. Cases such as:
- Pata Rât (Cluj-Napoca) – Over 300 Roma were forcibly evicted in 2010 and relocated near the city’s landfill, where they live in extreme poverty.
- Baia Mare (2012) – The local government built concrete walls around Roma neighborhoods to separate them from the rest of the city.
- Bucharest, Ferentari – The state has allowed entire blocks inhabited by Roma to deteriorate, in what amounts to a policy of passive eviction.
These actions are not accidental; they are part of a broader capitalist strategy of urban gentrification, where land previously occupied by poor communities is reclaimed for real estate development and profit generation.
The Path to Emancipation for Roma Workers
The analysis above demonstrates that anti-Roma racism in Romania is structural. It is not an accident of history, nor can it be eliminated through awareness campaigns or legislative reforms. Racism in capitalism serves a clear economic function—to maintain a segment of the working class in extreme vulnerability, ensuring that wages remain low and working conditions remain exploitative for all workers.
Thus, anti-racist struggle cannot and must not be separated from the struggle against capitalism. Similarly, the workers’ movement cannot ignore the racialization of a significant portion of the proletariat and its consequences.
A real fight against racism cannot be reduced to liberal measures such as NGO projects, diversity policies, or government “integration” initiatives. These approaches do not challenge the structure of power—they merely propose a more “inclusive” exploitation.
Instead, a political and economic struggle is necessary—one that directly targets the structures of capital. This means:
- Unionizing Roma workers and ensuring equal labor rights.
- Fighting against precarious working conditions to prevent mass exploitation.
- Struggling for massive investments in housing and education as solutions addressing inequality.
- Fighting against racist narratives in the working class, exposing how racism benefits capital at the expense of workers.
- Organising common actions and struggles on a local level to break prejudices in action.
Anti-Roma racism will not disappear as long as capitalism continues to function—because it is an integral part of its logic. True emancipation does not mean integrating Roma into capitalism—it means abolishing the system that has exploited and marginalized them for centuries. Revolutionary organizations must, therefore, wage common struggles with the struggles of the Roma working class, as their emancipation is part of the emancipation of the entire proletariat.
Sources and references
- Marx, Karl. Capital: Volume 1. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/
- Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States. New York: Routledge, 1986.
- Mbembe, Achille. Necropolitics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019
- Hancock, Ian. We Are the Romani People. Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2002.
- European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC). Security à la Italiana – Police Brutality Against Roma in Italy. 2000. https://www.errc.org/uploads/upload_en/file/03/4D/m0000034D.pdf
- European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC). Roma Rights 2: Nothing About Us Without Us. 2015. https://www.errc.org/uploads/upload_en/file/roma-rights-2-2015-nothing-about-us-without-us.pdf
- Petrova, Dimitrina. The Denial of Racism. Roma Rights Journal, 2000. https://www.errc.org/roma-rights-journal/the-denial-of-racism
- Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA). Roma and Travellers in Six Countries: Fundamental Rights Agency Report, 2021.https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2021/roma-and-travellers-six-countries-technical-report
- Surdu, Mihai. The Roma in Romania: From Marginalization to Forced Migration. Bucharest: ISPMN, 2019.
