Italy is home to roughly 140,000 Roma, Sinti, and Caminanti people, sometimes collectively and often pejoratively called “gypsies,” making them one of the country’s most marginalized and least understood minority groups.1Emerald Insight. The Education of Roma, Sinti and Caminanti Children in Italy: Pathways to School Inclusion Their situation in Italy is distinct from that in other European countries, shaped by a unique system of segregated camps, centuries of cultural exchange and tension with the majority population, and a legal landscape that has drawn repeated international criticism. The term “gypsy” itself is widely considered a slur across Europe, and within Italy these communities prefer to be identified by their specific ethnic group rather than a blanket label.
Roma, Sinti, and Caminanti Are Not One Group
One of the most common misunderstandings is treating all Romani-origin people in Italy as a single community. In reality, the population breaks down into at least three distinct groups with different histories, languages, and relationships to Italian society. The Sinti have lived in northern and central Italy for centuries, with some families tracing their presence back five hundred years or more. The Roma include both long-settled Italian Romani communities, particularly in the south, and more recent arrivals from the Balkans and Eastern Europe over the past few decades. The Caminanti, sometimes called Camminanti, are a smaller group concentrated in Sicily whose origins and cultural practices differ from both Roma and Sinti.
These distinctions matter because the groups do not necessarily share a single identity, dialect, or set of traditions. A Sinti family in Trentino-Alto Adige whose ancestors settled in the region two centuries ago has a fundamentally different relationship to Italian society than a Romani family that arrived from Romania in the 2000s. Italian public discourse and policy, however, have tended to collapse all of these communities into one undifferentiated category, which has contributed to stereotyping and made targeted social policy harder to design.
Researchers who study these communities have described them as a “hidden minority” because official data collection on ethnic minorities in Italy is limited.2Emerald Insight. The Education of Roma, Sinti and Caminanti Children in Italy: Pathways to School Inclusion The roughly 140,000 figure that circulates in national reports is an estimate, and some advocacy organizations believe the real number could be somewhat higher. Without reliable census data broken down by ethnicity, it is difficult to get a precise picture of demographics, living conditions, or social outcomes.
Historical Presence and Fascist-Era Persecution
Romani groups have been documented in Italy since at least the fifteenth century. Over the following centuries, Sinti communities in particular became part of the social fabric of northern Italian towns, working as artisans, horse traders, and itinerant musicians. Their relationship with the majority population was never entirely smooth, but it was far more integrated than the segregated model that developed in the twentieth century.
The fascist period marked a sharp turn. Under Mussolini’s regime, Italian Sinti were subjected to internment alongside other groups deemed undesirable by the state. Archival and ethnographic research has documented the internment of Sinti families in provinces such as Modena, where they were confined in camps as part of broader fascist policies of social control.3Romani Studies. The internment of Italian Sinti in the province of Modena during fascism: From ethnographic to archival research This history is far less well known than the persecution of Jewish Italians during the same period, and it receives comparatively little attention in Italian public memory. The Romani genocide during World War II, known in Romani as the Porajmos, claimed hundreds of thousands of lives across Europe, yet recognition of this history has been slow to materialize in Italian educational curricula and public memorials.
The legacy of this period is significant because the institutional habit of confining Romani people in designated spaces did not disappear when fascism fell. While the explicit ideology changed, the administrative reflex of managing Roma and Sinti through spatial separation carried forward into the postwar decades and continues to shape Italian policy today.
Italy’s Camp System
Perhaps the most distinctive and controversial aspect of Italy’s treatment of Roma and Sinti is its extensive system of designated camps. Italy has been described as “campland” in European policy circles because it created the largest and most systematic model of territorial segregation of Roma people within institutional camps anywhere on the continent.4Società MutamentoPolitica. From Ferrarotti’s baraccati to Roma camps. The long wave of housing marginality No other Western European country has relied so heavily on camps as the primary housing solution for Romani communities.
The camps range from official, government-administered sites, sometimes euphemistically called “solidarity villages,” to unauthorized settlements that spring up on the margins of cities. In Rome, extensive ethnographic research has documented how city policy has bifurcated the Roma population into two main living situations: surveillance-intensive authorized “villages” where residents live under heavy monitoring and bureaucratic control, and unauthorized micro-encampments where families live in makeshift shelters with essentially no services.5International Sociology. The informal faces of the (neo-)ghetto: State confinement, formalization and multidimensional informalities in Italy’s Roma camps Neither option offers a path toward genuine housing stability. The authorized camps impose rules and surveillance that many residents find dehumanizing, while the unauthorized settlements lack basic infrastructure.
The camp model has been challenged repeatedly at the European level. A landmark case brought by the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions against Italy before the European Committee of Social Rights resulted in findings that Italy had committed aggravated violations of housing rights through forced evictions of Roma communities.6Oxford Academic. ‘Aggravated Violations’, Roma Housing Rights and Forced Expulsions in Italy: Recent Developments under the European Social Charter Collective Complaints System The Committee’s decision was significant not just for its findings about Italy but also because it marked the first time the body used an expedited complaints process and engaged with the concept of an “aggravated violation” under the European Social Charter. In practical terms, this meant that international bodies concluded Italy was not merely failing to provide adequate housing but actively making the situation worse through evictions that destroyed what little stability residents had managed to build.
Despite these rulings, the camp system has proven remarkably durable. Italian municipalities continue to rely on camps as the default response, in part because mainstream housing integration faces intense local political opposition. The result is a self-reinforcing cycle: camps produce visible concentrations of poverty and marginality, which fuel public hostility, which makes it politically impossible to move toward scattered housing solutions, which ensures that camps persist.
Health Consequences of Camp Living
Living conditions in Roma camps translate directly into health outcomes, and the data is grim. A study of children living in five foreign Roma camps in Italy found that in the two weeks before the survey, roughly a third of the children had suffered from diarrhea and more than half had experienced a cough. About one in six had dealt with respiratory difficulties in the preceding year.7PubMed Central. Minority health and small numbers epidemiology: a case study of living conditions and the health of children in 5 foreign Romá camps in Italy These are not exotic diseases; they are the predictable consequences of overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate drainage, the presence of rats, and reliance on wood-burning stoves for heating.
The study identified the length of time a family had lived in a camp as a risk factor in itself. The longer children spent in camp conditions, the more likely they were to develop these health problems. This finding undercuts any argument that camps are a temporary or transitional solution. Even when intended as short-term, camps tend to become semi-permanent, and the health burden compounds over time. Access to healthcare is a separate challenge: legal status issues, language barriers, and simple geographic isolation from clinics all reduce the likelihood that camp residents receive preventive care or timely treatment.
Education and the Inclusion Gap
School attendance among Roma, Sinti, and Caminanti children in Italy is lower than the national average, and the dropout rate is higher. The reasons are intertwined with the housing situation, legal status, and cultural dynamics. Families living in camps on the periphery of cities face long commutes to schools, and children who move between camps or cities mid-year often fall behind academically. Research on RSC education in Italy has focused on identifying pathways to better school inclusion, examining both the structural barriers that keep children out of classrooms and the policy measures that have been tried to support their educational success.8Emerald Insight. The Education of Roma, Sinti and Caminanti Children in Italy: Pathways to School Inclusion
Some of the obstacles are practical. If a family lacks stable housing or faces the threat of eviction, keeping children enrolled in a consistent school becomes nearly impossible. Other barriers are social. RSC children frequently encounter prejudice from classmates and sometimes from teachers, which discourages attendance. And some families, particularly those with stronger traditions of itinerant work, view formal schooling with ambivalence, seeing it as disconnected from the skills and knowledge their children will actually need. Effective inclusion programs tend to work on multiple fronts simultaneously, addressing transportation, mediating between families and schools, and adapting curricula to be more culturally responsive.
Language as an Invisible Heritage
The Romani language, in its many dialects, is one of the most overlooked elements of Italy’s linguistic diversity. Italy is home to several distinct Romani dialect groups, reflecting centuries of separate development. Older settlement varieties spoken by long-established Sinti and Roma communities differ from the dialects spoken by more recent arrivals. A linguistic survey of these dialects has documented both conservative features, where older forms of the language have been preserved, and innovative ones, where Italian and regional Italian languages have influenced vocabulary, syntax, and pronunciation.9LINGUISTIK ONLINE. La lingua dei Rom e dei Sinti
Italy has legislation designed to protect linguistic minorities, but Romani has faced serious difficulties in gaining recognition under this framework. The system was designed with territorially concentrated minorities in mind, such as German speakers in South Tyrol or French speakers in the Aosta Valley. Because Romani speakers are geographically dispersed rather than concentrated in a single region, they do not fit neatly into the existing legal categories. There have been some positive developments at the regional level. Calabria and Abruzzo have taken steps to promote the recognition and preservation of the Romani language, representing a change of pace from the national-level inaction.10LINGUISTIK ONLINE. La lingua dei Rom e dei Sinti But these remain exceptions rather than the rule, and without consistent institutional support, many younger members of RSC communities are shifting toward Italian as their primary language, putting the older dialects at risk.
Music and Cultural Contributions
When people think of Romani culture in Europe, music is often the first thing that comes to mind, and Italy’s Sinti communities have a rich and distinctive musical tradition. In Trentino-Alto Adige, in Italy’s northeast, a group known as the Sinti Estraixaria, or “Austrian” Sinti, have been present for roughly two centuries. These families settled gradually in a region that was once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and while they maintained a degree of mobility, music became a central professional and cultural practice.11Music & Minorities. Stories and Memories of Sinti Estraixaria
Musical knowledge was handed down within families, creating what researchers have described as veritable “dynasties” of players spanning multiple generations.12Music & Minorities. Stories and Memories of Sinti Estraixaria This tradition is not a quaint relic. It represents an active, living cultural practice that connects contemporary Sinti musicians to a lineage of performance stretching back centuries. The musical styles blend Romani influences with the folk traditions of the surrounding Alpine region, producing something that belongs fully to neither culture alone but is a genuine hybrid. Like jazz Manouche, the guitar-driven style associated with Django Reinhardt and the Sinti of France and Belgium, the musical traditions of Italian Sinti have deep roots in family transmission and improvisation, though the specific repertoires and contexts differ.
Beyond music, Sinti and Roma communities historically practiced a range of itinerant trades, including metalworking, basket weaving, and horse trading. Many of these trades have declined as the broader Italian economy has changed, but they remain part of the cultural memory and identity of the communities. The challenge for younger generations is maintaining a connection to these traditions while navigating an economy that increasingly demands formal credentials and stable addresses, both of which the camp system makes difficult to obtain.
The Catholic Church and Romani Communities
Italy is a predominantly Catholic country, and the Church’s relationship with Roma and Sinti communities has its own complicated history. Systematic Catholic engagement with what the Church historically termed “Nomads” did not begin until the twentieth century, and the approaches taken have varied considerably depending on the era and the individual clergy involved.13Nomadic Peoples. The Catholic Church and the Evangelisation of ‘Nomads’ in Italy
Research into the Church’s pastoral strategies has identified at least three distinct approaches that have operated simultaneously within Italian Catholicism. One is the Church of “projects,” focused on social integration through practical programs like housing assistance and job training. Another is the Church that evangelizes, concerned primarily with bringing Roma and Sinti into the Catholic faith and sacramental life. The third, borrowing Pope Francis’s phrase, is the Church that “smells of sheep,” meaning clergy who embed themselves in Romani communities and share their daily conditions rather than approaching from outside with a reform agenda.14Nomadic Peoples. The Catholic Church and the Evangelisation of ‘Nomads’ in Italy These three currents have not always cooperated smoothly, and the varying imageries of Roma and Sinti held by different segments of the Church have influenced which approach dominated in a given period or diocese.
Many Roma and Sinti in Italy do identify as Catholic, though their religious practice often incorporates elements specific to their own cultural traditions. Pilgrimages to Marian shrines, for instance, are an important tradition for some Romani communities across Europe, and Italian Sinti and Roma participate in these alongside the majority population. The relationship is not one-directional; it reflects centuries of negotiation between Romani cultural practices and the dominant religious institution of the country.
Employment, Informality, and the Ghetto Effect
The economic situation of Roma and Sinti in Italy is shaped by the same segregation that defines their housing. Camp life pushes residents into informal employment, not because of any cultural predisposition but because the structure of the camps makes formal work extremely difficult to access. When your address is a camp on the outskirts of a city, when your legal status may be uncertain, and when employers associate your community with negative stereotypes, entering the regular labor market requires overcoming barriers that most Italian citizens never face.
Ethnographic work in Rome has shown how the city’s policies toward Roma have produced intertwined informalities in housing and employment that reinforce existing power inequalities. Despite this, Roma residents actively attempt to build social capital within and beyond their communities, seeking connections to the broader economy and society.15International Sociology. The informal faces of the (neo-)ghetto: State confinement, formalization and multidimensional informalities in Italy’s Roma camps The picture is not one of passive victimhood. People in these communities hustle, network, and strategize. But they do so within a system that was designed for containment rather than integration, and the structural constraints are powerful.
Scrap metal collection, market vending, seasonal agricultural labor, and various forms of self-employment are common occupations. Some of these are perfectly legal but are treated with suspicion when performed by Roma. Others fall into gray areas of Italy’s already substantial informal economy. The irony is that Italian society has a long tradition of informal and semi-formal work across many sectors, yet when Roma participate in the same economic patterns, it is framed as evidence of an unwillingness to integrate rather than as a rational response to exclusion from formal channels.
Public Attitudes and Political Exploitation
Surveys consistently show that Roma are among the most negatively perceived minority groups in Italy, often ranking below recent immigrant communities in public opinion polls. This hostility has been politically useful. During periods of heightened public anxiety about crime or immigration, Italian politicians across the political spectrum have targeted Roma communities with punitive rhetoric and policy proposals. Emergency decrees, camp clearances, and census-like registration exercises have all been used as political tools, generating headlines and demonstrating “toughness” without addressing the underlying conditions that produce marginality.
The 2008 “Nomad Emergency” declared by the Berlusconi government was a particularly visible example. It granted prefects in Rome, Milan, and Naples extraordinary powers to fingerprint and register Roma residents, including children, and to clear unauthorized settlements. The measures were later struck down by Italian courts as unconstitutional, but the political damage was done: the emergency framing cemented the association between Roma presence and crisis in the public mind. More recently, far-right political figures have continued to use anti-Roma rhetoric as a reliable applause line, and even centrist politicians have been reluctant to push back for fear of being seen as soft.
What makes this cycle so difficult to break is that the very policies designed to “manage” Roma communities produce the visible poverty and marginality that fuels public hostility. A camp on the edge of a city, surrounded by trash because municipal services do not serve it adequately, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: residents are blamed for conditions that are largely the result of state neglect and deliberate spatial exclusion.
The Question of Citizenship and Legal Status
Not all Roma and Sinti in Italy face the same legal situation. Many Sinti families are Italian citizens whose ancestors have lived in the country for generations. Some Roma hold Italian citizenship as well, while others are citizens of other EU member states, particularly Romania and the former Yugoslav republics. A smaller but significant group occupies a legal gray zone: people who were born in Italy or have lived there for decades but lack citizenship due to Italy’s citizenship laws, which have historically been based on descent rather than birthplace. Some individuals are effectively stateless, holding no citizenship from any country, which makes them invisible to social services and ineligible for many rights that citizens take for granted.
This diversity of legal status within the same communities complicates policy responses. An Italian Sinto citizen has a fundamentally different set of rights and options than a stateless person of Roma origin living in the same camp. Yet from the outside, and in the eyes of many policymakers, they are treated as a single problem to be managed. Any serious approach to improving the situation would need to begin by disaggregating these very different legal circumstances and designing responses appropriate to each.
Regional Variation Across Italy
Italy is a country of strong regional differences, and the situation of Roma and Sinti varies considerably from north to south. In the north, Sinti communities with deep historical roots live alongside more recent Roma arrivals from Eastern Europe, and municipal governments in cities like Milan, Turin, and Bologna have experimented with various inclusion and housing programs, with mixed results. In Rome, the sheer scale of the Roma population and the political visibility of the camps have made the issue a perennial flashpoint. In southern Italy and Sicily, communities like the Caminanti have a somewhat different relationship to the surrounding society, less marked by the camp system and more embedded in local economic and social networks, though still marginalized.
The regional variation extends to language policy as well. As noted, Calabria and Abruzzo have taken steps toward recognizing the Romani language, while most other regions have done nothing. Local political culture, the size and visibility of the Romani population, and the presence or absence of active advocacy organizations all influence how the issue plays out in any given area. What works in a small town in Trentino, where a handful of Sinti families have been part of the community for generations, is unlikely to translate directly to a large unauthorized settlement on the outskirts of Naples.