Coping with everyday bordering: Roma migrants and gatekeepers in Helsinki

ABSTRACT

The article analyses intra-European bordering on the local level through the case of Eastern European Roma in Helsinki. Precarious EU migrants outside the Nordic labour markets have formed a group neither “in” nor completely “out” of national welfare structures. We argue that various level authorities have responded to the loss of direct control over legitimate yet unwanted migrants by mobilizing municipal workers and local police as everyday gatekeepers. Policy towards the Roma migrants in Helsinki is ethnicized (conceptualizing them as a special category requiring targeted measures) and “NGOized” (relegating elementary social provision to the third sector). Their presence of is not formally challenged, yet they are effectively without access to social rights and pathways to permanent residence. Meanwhile, the migrants strive to improve their disadvantaged position through transnational, family-based livelihood strategies, which are actively adapted to the shifting European and Finnish borderscapes.