Citizenship Studies has just published a thought provoking review essay by Huub van Baar on recent work on the emergence of the Romani movement, the EU and neoliberalism. The essay reviews three recent books on the topic: Romani Politics in Contemporary Europe edited by Nando Sigona and Nidhi Trehan (Palgrave, 2009); The Romani Movement by Peter Vermeersch(Berghahn, 2006) and Who Speaks for the Roma? by Aidan McGarry(Continuum, 2010).

van Baar’s main interest is to suggest novel ways to understand Romani political movement in the EU and move toward a politics of Roma’s representation beyond hegemonic neoliberalism. In such endeavour, he challenges current understandings on the relationship between grassroots and elitist mobilisation among Roma, the relationship between neoliberalism and human rights, and contribution of international NGOs and supranational institutions to the definition of EU agenda on the Roma issue.