EUROPE: Hard times for the Roma

œNo role models, says Zvezdelina Atanassova when asked why education is not valued in Lozenets. In this Roma (gypsy) neighbourhood in Stara Zagora, a town of 138,000 in south-eastern Bulgaria, she is a rarity: a Roma, a woman and a student. Girls here rarely study beyond primary school. Boys drop out at age 15, as soon as they can get a driving licence. Asked about their aspirations, seven in ten say they want to become pimps, laments Gantcho Iliev, who runs a charity working with Lozenets™ youth. No other occupation comes with a big house, posh car and the attention of attractive women. The Roma (widely believed to have originated in India) make up 5 percent of Bulgaria™s population, says the census. Yet this is an underestimate, as many distrust officials and refuse to register, or misstate their ethnicity because prejudice equates it with backwardness and petty crime. In six central and eastern European countries, the Roma are believed to constitute 7-10 percent of the population. Across Europe, half of Roma lack amenities such as running water. Only 15 percent have secondary education. Anti-Roma sentiment is increasing in Bulgaria and Hungary, where minority-bashers gained parliamentary seats last year. Hungary™s Jobbik, led by the founder of a black-clad brigade of thugs who terrorised Roma neighbourhoods until banned in 2009, took 21 percent of the vote. Other parties now court anti-Roma voters. Such prospects, says Zeljko Jovanovic of the Open Society Foundations, drive Roma who succeed through education to hide their ethnicity and cut ties with the places where they grew up, depriving these areas of good examples. Migration data are lacking, but Roma are present in most rich EU countries, getting a mixed reception ” from having makeshift camps bulldozed in France and Italy to being offered help in Belgium and Germany. Many are drawn by generous welfare systems. Some seek more lucrative law-breaking, from pickpocketing to serious crimes. But surveys find that most who migrate do so for work. Around a fifth of Roma households in Bulgaria have a family member working abroad, says Alexey Pamporov of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Many go back and forth for seasonal jobs in construction or agriculture. Branch campuses losing shine Opening branch campuses is now the lowest internationalisation priority for European universities, according to a major study, prompting suggestions that a market dominated by UK institutions is now past its peak. In a survey conducted by the European Association for International Education (EAIE), just 1 percent of respondents who worked for universities said they had witnessed a substantial increase in branch campus activity at their institution in the past three years. Twelve percent said they had seen an increase, while 53 percent reported no change and 1 percent said branch campus activity had decreased. This puts branch campuses at the bottom of the list of 15 internationalisation trends that the EAIE asked about, with institutions focusing instead on strategic partnerships and student mobility. The UK has led the way in Europe on…