Why self-care matters for Roma people and beyond. Vulnerability and the (un)making of water and sanitation infrastructure at the margins of the city

• Published in: Geoforum 2019-05, Vol.101, p.192-201
• Main Author: Rosa, Elisabetta
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Activities of daily living; Discourses; Ethnographic research; Health care; Health services; Humanization; Hygiene; Infrastructure; Living conditions; Local authorities; Marginality; Marseille; Organic chemistry; Police; Power; Roma people; Romani people; Sanitation; Security; Self care; Settlements; Social exclusion; Toilets; Turin; Unsafe; Urban margins; Vulnerability; Water; Water and sanitation infrastructure; Water supply
• ISSN: 0016-7185; 1872-9398
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.02.008

Roma people living in makeshift settlements in Western European cities are frequently represented as the ultimate example of socio-spatial marginalisation and vulnerability. In Italy and France, it is common practice for police forces to evict inhabitants from these places, often legitimized by discourses of security and hygiene that highlight the Roma’s unhealthy and unsafe living conditions. At the same time, local authorities sometimes provide makeshift settlements with chemical toilets and on-site health care services. In both cases, Roma people are seen and treated as passive objects of public action and power. By focusing on self-care practices and the way Roma people deal with the lack of water and sanitation infrastructures, and drawing on a piece of ethnographic research I conducted in Turin and Marseille, in this paper I show how they take care of themselves and challenge marginalisation and vulnerability. Based on Butlerian arguments, the analysis focuses on how spaces of self-care are constantly re-created and transformed and how the differential allocation of vulnerability is faced accordingly, allowing the Roma people to make their lives liveable. Based on this analysis, the paper concludes with reconsidering the relationship between self-care and vulnerability from a perspective that takes into account both the biological and the biographical dimensions of life. Rethinking self-care and showing how it matters in making life liveable under both these dimensions can open up new possibilities against differential vulnerability and the de-humanisation of the Roma people.