LOOKING AT THE EU ANTI-DISCRIMINATION MEASURES TOWARDS THE ROMA PEOPLE THROUGH THE GLASS OF INTERSECTIONALITY: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

This Ph.D. thesis consists in a qualitative impact evaluation of the EU anti- discrimination measures from the point of view of 60 Roma young respondents aged between 18 and 30 years and living in Germany and in Italy. The inquiry explores how the EU anti-discrimination measures work at the “shop floor” of the Roma participants, as well as whether and how the these measures foster the Roma young people’s social inclusion. The methodological background of the research is rooted in the Transformative Paradigm, which relies on a democratic and pluralistic conception of evaluation. Additionally, the critical theoretical background of intersectionality, an offspring of the Critical Race Theory, demands to place those more “invisible” within “visible minorities” at the centre of the evaluation, in order to let the evaluation itself become a tool for respondents’ emancipation. The thesis consists of eight chapters and is articulated in two parts, framed by Chapter I, which is the introductory Chapter, and Chapter VIII, which delineates the conclusions on the whole research work. Part One, consisting of Chapters II and Chapter III, provides with theoretical background information on the methodology adopted for accomplishing this research and with a detailed description of the object of the evaluation, i.e. the EU anti-discrimination measures generated by the art. 13 EC (Art. 19 TFEU). Part Two delves into the empirical research and reports the fieldwork. More in detail, Chapter 4 refines the methodology, details the sampling procedure, the hypothesis, the aims and objectives of this evaluation, the first steps on the field, and the decisions taken on how to present the data analysis and the data interpretation. Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 give a detailed Country-specific account of the evaluation of the EU anti-discrimination measures accomplished with Roma young men and women, respectively, in Germany and in Italy. Each Chapter presents the data collected on the field and explores how they shed light on the substantive object of the evaluation in the Country scenario. Part II ends with a comparative reflections on the findings collected in the two Countries (Chapter VII). Lastly, Chapter 8 delineates the general conclusions on the whole research.