us that it was a local NGO shepherding a delegation from the EU into Polje. As the visitors gingerly stepped over the detritus at Polje’s entrance, one man loudly complained that his new shoes were getting dirty. Rolling his eyes, Bekim predicted nothing positive would come from this intrusion. “They never really help us,” he said. The NGO staff led the group to Bekim’s shack and, without introducing their EU companions, began their presentation. A member of the organization pointed to Albin, Bekim, and Fatime and explained in English that these individuals were Romani refugees from Kosovo. He then reviewed the legal status of displaced persons in Serbia and discussed how “these Roma” were the victims of systematic marginalization. NGO staff pointed at Albin, Bekim, and Fatime again, this time reporting that the family experienced difficulty obtaining identity documents and had been evicted from their previous settlement. The mission of the NGO, they continued, was to redress the marginalization of Roma by securing documents for individuals and legally fighting forced evictions. Switching to Serbian, they asked Albin to tell his story, which they translated into English. He solemnly explained that Polje’s residents lacked running water, obtained electricity illegally, and did not permit their children to attend school. Gesturing to his surroundings, Albin said everything was substandard. To demonstrate the fragility of their homes, he shook the side of Bekim’s shack.
By this stage, a number of Polje’s Romani residents had joined our group. Unable to understand English and excluded from the proceedings, they began talking and joking with one another. This prompted one of the female visitors to loudly ask them to be quiet. She wanted to hear the NGO’s presentation, not a loud Romani conversation. At that point a member of the EU delegation spoke up, asking the Serbian staff to translate while he addressed the crowd. The man introduced himself as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) and promised to work toward improving the lives of Roma by bringing Serbian laws in line with EU standards. When this occurred, he said, Romani rights would be expanded nationally and settlement demolition would cease. In response, Albin volunteered that Roma had experienced much greater freedom and security not long ago, under the Milošević regime. Characterizing Milošević as a strong leader, Albin praised him for keeping Kosovo safe. These statements elicited only silence from the visitors, who were aware that Milošević stood accused of committing war crimes and genocide.
The MEP changed the subject and asked Albin if any local churches provided food or assistance to Roma. Albin replied that some might help but he was unsure. Following up, the MEP queried the denomination of their church, to which Albin replied, Muslim. Again, an awkward pause followed as the MEP chose not to pursue the topic further. An NGO worker broke the silence, informing the group that they were late and had to leave immediately. The MEP congratulated the NGO staff on their work in the settlement and then promised to do what he could for its residents. Turning to leave, the MEP added that although he hoped for positive results, Polje’s residents should not expect this to occur swiftly, if at all. As we watched them walk out of the settlement, Slobodan whispered that nothing would change; this was simply another effort to make money from the suffering of Roma.
The visit was one example of how the hardships endured by legally invisible refugees are packaged and sold to donors. The delegation was shown shacks standing amid a trash-strewn landscape and heard tales of impoverishment, but these interactions were all choreographed. Ashkali were to stand quietly as others discussed them in a language they did not understand. They were to speak only when prompted, and if residents behaved in a way considered disrespectful, they were immediately silenced. Polje’s population became little more than generic representations of victimhood. The EU visitors ignored statements that fell outside this realm of discourse, such as Albin’s praise of Milošević. Perhaps most importantly, Ashkali were consistently misrepresented as Roma. Members of the delegation remained completely unaware of the identity of those they were striving to aid. Consequently, the visit rendered Bekim, Fatime, and Albin visibly invisible.
Instead of gaining insight into the lives of Polje’s residents, NGO staff and EU representatives were complicit in transforming Ashkali into ciganski stereotypes. This resulted, in part, from the perpetual need of NGOs to justify their mission and compete for funding.76 To attract donors, NGOs in the Balkans co-opted popular images and narratives of Roma as a fundamentally needy yet deserving “problem population.” The objective of the visit to Polje was not to understand Bekim’s, Fatime’s, or Albin’s perspective. Ashkali were merely a tool to obtain EU support. Any awareness of the complexity of Ashkali and Romani identity would have endangered a simplistic and concise understanding of Romani impoverishment. It is through the distance of not knowing that activists are able to reduce suffering to a list of compelling bullet points that are deemed worthy of financing.77 As a consequence the proliferation of Romani-centric strategies, directives, and initiatives has been criticized for profiting from disadvantage while reinforcing the very labels they sought to combat.78 Historical portrayals are refashioned into a new, institutionalized Romani identity, which continues to be controlled by non-Romani politicians, scholars, and bureaucrats.79
NGOs and international agencies not only homogenized Roma but also pigeonholed national governments. Throughout the visit the EU was cast as a concerned and enlightened entity repudiating repressive Serbian policies. The MEP failed to mention that civil society organizations have criticized a number of EU states for committing rights violations: France illegally deported Roma, for example, while Slovakia built walls around Romani settlements. Spaces of exception also littered the EU. The most notable difference between these governments and the Serbian state was not exclusion but inaction. Serbia has historically exerted a much less forceful role in its management of informal Romani settlements. From 2009 to 2013 the government removed over twenty settlements in and around Belgrade but more than a hundred remained untouched.80 Deponija has yet to be demolished. Despite policies pledging to reclaim land from squatters, these plans were seldom enacted. This inertia was an outcome of the state’s inability to resettle displaced residents. Social housing vacancies were limited and attempts to construct new buildings for Roma were often met with Serbian protests. Given the difficulties of securing alternate accommodation for Roma, the state was reluctant to raze settlements.
Consequently, it was private enterprise, not the Serbian government, that largely dictated when and where settlement demolition would occur. Similar to Roma and Ashkali, land developers were also ignoring state regulations. In contexts such as these, Ong notes that sovereignty becomes flexible “as governments adjust political space to the dictates of global capital, giving corporations an indirect power over the political conditions of citizens in zones that are differently articulated to global production and financial circuits.”81 Indeed, an underfunded Serbian planning authority had little choice but to accept an investor urbanism, where those with capital could effectively usurp public land.82 This led to a graduated sovereignty, where private interests overlapped and destabilized state authority.83 At Zgrade and elsewhere it was the unchecked capitalist endeavors of a burgeoning neoliberalism that largely propelled evictions. Interestingly, both settlement removal and the advocacy groups dedicated to ending this practice resulted from the state’s retreat and the growth of private organizations. Investor urbanism and NGOs were trademarks of a neoliberal regime. The same processes produced the destruction of Endrit’s home in Zgrade and the construction of his new one in Kosovo.
As NGOs, the EU, Romani rights activists, and the Serbian government wrangled with one another over the fate of settlements, Ashkali and Roma were expected to parrot the popular narratives of poverty and neediness. The EU delegation was not the only group wishing to experience Romani inequality firsthand. Each year a small number of journalists, researchers, politicians, and missionaries also wandered into Polje. When this occurred, Ashkali gave the same speech, tailoring their responses to fit the conventions of aid discourse: there is no work, we live in unhygienic conditions, and our children do not go to school. Narratives fit a formula that did not always reflect reality. Albin emotionally described how he inhabited a substandard shack in Polje, but his family actually resided in a container on the other side of the city. Crucially, neither Bekim nor Albin mentioned the utility of the trash or that it was possible for some settlement residents to earn enough money to build brick homes. And Ashkali never revealed that they were not Roma.
Year after year, advocates vowed to redress inequalities but tangible