The (just another peculiar) institutionalization of Roma children in Czech Republic: numbers, reasons and trajectories
Abstract
The overrepresentation of Roma children in the state care in the Czech Republic has been known for long, however scholarship on this issue is still lacking. This article aims to partly fill the gap by summarizing previous findings, publicizing official but not-so-known statistics on institutionalization disaggregated by ethnicity, and inquiring in the reasons for overrepresentation and trajectories of family disintegrations.
Original findings from a 2010 field research which consisted of 230 interview with different parts of Czech socio-legal-protection (SLP) system, and most importantly Roma parents and children, are presented. The official statistics show that the chance for institutionalization of Roma children are about ten times higher than for the non-Roma, and that this chance varies significantly between regions of the CR.
Housing problems, lack of emergency housing facilities and social housing were among the most often mentioned reasons for the children removal in the accounts of Roma families who had their children removed. The family disintegration trajectories often start with separation (either voluntary or ordered) of the parents and consequent difficulties, leading to the removal of children.
It is also briefly sketched how the current SLP system works towards criminalization and racialization of poverty and marginality in the Czech Republic.