Fényes Csaba

Defining the target group is one of the most fundamental tasks of any policy and besides its theoretical importance, it may play a crucial role in the overall usability and success of the policy in question. In the case of Roma, there are at least two possibilities to define the target group: as an ethnic group on the one hand or as a social group on the other. This paper aims to examine how Roma policies define their target group. We will see that policies are not always clear about the definition and that there is a difference between international and national policies in this respect. In most of the cases, Roma are regarded as an ethnic group but a more thorough analysis reveals that they are still seen as a socio-economically defined group of people, where ethnicity and related factors do not play a central role. Most of the national strategies use a socio-economic approach in their strategies even if they define Roma as an ethnicity or, sometimes, even a nationality. In some
of the cases, national policies are trying hard to avoid an ethnic approach to the problem, which carries certain dangers. We will also point out that the definition of Roma as an ethnicity in some of the policy documents also carries both theoretical and practical problems. Another problem, perhaps underlying the previously mentioned ones is the visible lack of an evidence based approach to building the policy. We will conclude that all these problems will make policies and integration strategies less powerful and in some cases even threaten the success of the policy. In the research, we are going to use content analysis. The research material is policy documents by EU bodies and international organisations on the one hand, and the national strategies submitted to the European
Commission in 2011 by some of the countries with the highest proportion of Roma citizens.