Advancing Urban and Local Governance in Western and Transition Europe

The Lefebvrian concept ‘Right to the City’ has gained traction in the past decade. This slogan increasingly alludes to new urban politics that aim to transform cities into both inclusive and malleable places. The antithesis of the right to the city includes displacement, evictions, and geographies of exclusion. This chapter grapples with these two literatures by analysing anti-Roma housing policies and community-led housing politics in light of failed European-wide attempts at ‘Roma-inclusion’. Specifically, it will consider the cases of the Netherlands and Romania, drawing on fieldworks conducted between 2016 and 2019 in Romania and between 2021 and 2023 in the Netherlands. The Romanian case is one of ongoing exclusion, disinvestment, and deepening segregation in Roma-inhabited slums (mahalale) and villages. In the Netherlands, the Sinto-Traveller caravan housing culture (woonwagencultuur) has been oppressed and diminished by phase-out policies aimed at forcing caravan dwellers into houses. Importantly, this chapter also considers the communities’ expressed aspirations and demands as articulations of the right to the city and the undoing of exclusion.