Multi-Disciplinary and Cross-National Approaches to Romany Studies - A Model for

Europe
Central European University, Budapest
June 22 - July 10, 2009

An Exclusion Process of Migrants.

Control of Gypsies and Border Police in Western Europe, 19071914.
Ilsen About
This paper represents the first step of a project on different aspects
of the policing of the Gypsies in Western Europe from the end of the 19 th
Century to the end of the 1920s. This project deals with circulation of
caravans of Gypsies in several countries, especially Italy, Switzerland,
France, Belgium and West Germany and the multiple practices of police
control. Of course, the knowledge on Gypsies elaborated in criminological
studies at this time or the juridical discourse on vagrants and nomads are
directly connected to the project. But the main empirical development
deals with the police practices regarding the control, the identification
and the surveillance of the groups defined as Gypsies. In this
perspective, my study is divided in three parts : the first is a in-deep study
of the police reviews or manuals, scientific police materials and also
reviews specially dedicated to the Gypsies that mentioned their situation
in the State jurisdictions and the specific police orders published at this
time. The second part is based on the analysis of international
correspondences between heads of police, minister of interiors or
minister of foreign affairs regarding the Gypsy circulation, the tensions
that emerged at the international scale

and the solutions proposed or

realised concerning the Gypsy problem as it is qualified at the

beginning of the 20th Century. The third is based on specific cases of
trans-national migrations of Gypsies, and the situation created at the
border, the conflicts and tensions between national police authorities
from different countries. Precisely, this part of the research is dedicated
to the study of day-to-day activities of different police authorities,
municipal

or

more

rarely

national

polices,

military

police

and

Multi-Disciplinary and Cross-National Approaches to Romany Studies - A Model for

Europe
Central European University, Budapest
June 22 - July 10, 2009

Gendarmerie and special border polices that are involved in the control of
Gypsy populations.
Policing the Gypsies in Europe in the 1900s: contexts and
problems.
During the 1900s, a discriminating definition of citizenship
restricted transborder migrations and the new principle of nationality
mechanically stigmatised Gypsies, who were suddenly considered as
foreigners. Paradoxically, this gradual tightening of the borders, before
WWI, produced an increasingly frequent practices of expelling caravans
in transit from one country to another. These multiple movements of
population tended to alarm the control authorities, generally represented
by police officers, which resulted in proliferating regulations, either local
police bills or national laws and decrees. The numerous testimonies from
local and national press newspapers reflects year after year the
increasingly

number

of

cases:

invasion,

multiplication,

uncontrollable are the words continuously associated to the Gypsies.

From the years 1907-1914, the politicisation, at a European level, of this
new Gypsy Question was compounded by defining vagrancy in criminal
terms and assigning Gypsies a specific racial identity, under the influence
of

criminal

anthropology,

legal

sociology,

and

social

hygiene.

Progressively, the Gypsy issue became both a political and diplomatic

issue and a policing and international problem.
Contemporaneously, during a foundation period, between 1885 and
1905, the creation of a specialised identification police coincides, in most
of European countries, with the mutations of the signaletic methods,
aiming at a systematic study of the criminal body, and with the
introduction of classification and organisation methods of the police card
index systems. With the dilution of the interpersonal links provoked by
the

industrial

and

urban

society

during

the

19 th

Century,

the

reinforcement of the administrative structures in all domains of the

governments has involved the development of new ways of remote control

Multi-Disciplinary and Cross-National Approaches to Romany Studies - A Model for

Europe
Central European University, Budapest
June 22 - July 10, 2009

of individuals. Among all the official administrations, it is within the

police institution that the innovations were the most important. The
police appears indeed as the principal vector which has contributed to
convince the political actors to diffuse the principles of the identification
to a more and more important population. At the end of the 19 th Century,
the police forces appear mainly urban and local but this forces became
more and more under the control of national and central institution.
During this period, the statues of police forces change very deeply and
appear before 1914 as one of the essential institution of the State action.
This is a European process but especially in the police services of France,
Italy,

Switzerland,

in

the

main

province

of

the

German

Empire

(Brandenburg, Saxony and Bavaria especially) and in the Austrian part of

the Austro-Hungarian Empire, during a first period which covers the
years 1880-1910, a technological revolution arise with new instruments
for the reading and the writing of the human body by the use of signaletic
descriptions or anthropometrical and dactyloscopic systems. From the
1890s, the figure of the international criminal, exemplify by the
anarchist, became central during the first steps of transnational police cooperation in Europe, mainly focused on police identification methods and
exchanges of individual data archives. The progressive incrimination of
vagrancy and the surveillance of mobile populations, nomads and
foreigners, leads, at national levels, to the extension of centralised system
of identification and special police forces specialised in the control of
mobile populations.
Police institutions and local services highly participated to the
revolution of identification methods and solve, by the implementation of
bureaucratic measures, the problem of organising and classifying the
expanding police files and card-index. This turning point in the history of
identification had direct consequences on the regulations governing the
movements of persons in Europe, as evidenced by the reform of the ID
cards and passports and the increasingly specialised nature of the police
services in charge of border control and migrant surveillance. On the one

Multi-Disciplinary and Cross-National Approaches to Romany Studies - A Model for

Europe
Central European University, Budapest
June 22 - July 10, 2009

hand, one can argue that Gypsies fall within a category that is
particularly targeted by the recent developments of modern policing
techniques. However, on the other hand, Gypsy control can be analysed
as an experimental laboratory for the new surveillance measures that
were imposed, from the 1920s onwards, to millions of migrants travelling
across Europe. Starting from this general framework, it seems possible to
probe the genealogy of contemporary Gypsy policies and study the
inception and development of the public security policies that have been
imposed on this specific category of population. Three major lines of
analysis appear particularly essential in this process.
The first line is the police collaboration schemes regarding the
surveillance, control and identification of Gypsies. From the antianarchist police conference, held in Rome in 1898, to the numerous
international police conferences before and after the creation of Interpol
in 1923, the relations between police heads in Europe created a
productive network on security problems, identification techniques and
control of migrants. Following some first investigations, the official
correspondence between policing agencies and the interventions of
diplomatic offices on the Gypsy question appear as an important topic
dealing with the transformation of police actions in the border lands. In
fact, a numerous and specific policing legislation and local regulations
were published after 1907 in Italy, France or Switzerland. The second line
of analysis is based on the reality of control and the effective methods and
systems used by the police to actually control Gypsies. In this way
portable identity documents, travel orders or police gazettes can be
examined and set in the historical context of identification history,
which means that it is necessary to consider both in the long run
phenomena which concern the definition of identity in modern time and
some little known objects such as file systems management and
bureaucratic procedures designed to search, watch and remotely control
individuals. The third line concerns day-to-day police practices: in fact
enacting new policing methods is no guarantee for efficiency, and

Multi-Disciplinary and Cross-National Approaches to Romany Studies - A Model for

Europe
Central European University, Budapest
June 22 - July 10, 2009

implementation issues frequently trigger adaptation mechanisms as well

as occasional or repeated amendments. Observing the tensions that arise
between police authorities and Gypsy populations during controls may
help to understand the highly unstable character of police practices
toward migrants. From a selection of local province archives, in
particular from border regions, observations will focus on how Gypsy
collective resistance strategies articulate with a variety of police schemes
and reactions of local populations, in order to gain insight into the
influence of several emblematic cases on the evolution of State
regulations.
How to solve the Gypsy question? Control and Identification,
1907-1915.
In the 1900s, the vision of the Gypsy was marked by the numerous
stereotypes popularised by racial anthropology and many investigations
which contribute to define the Gypsy in ethnical and racial categories.
The Gypsy Type in the police documents is suggested by many scientific
researches produced by the network of the criminal anthropology, the
identification expertise and the juridical sociology. A very clear continuity
emerged between the vocabulary used by these scientific treaties and the
language that the police agents have to learn in the identification lessons
and police manuals. During the period before the First World War, the
tenseness caused by an exacerbated nationalism, the rise of xenophobia
created the conditions of a focus on those populations regarding as
strangers, in spite of their old rooting in Europe.
There was already a specific regulation emitted in the years 1870
and one general census was organised in France in 1895 and in Bavaria
in 1899 but generally the application of the rules was very relative and
repeated measurements of active control of these nomads revealed the
impotence of the authorities. From 1905, the tenseness is reinforced
against these marked populations which are suspected to be beggars,
swindlers and thieves and considered as dangerous for the social order.

Multi-Disciplinary and Cross-National Approaches to Romany Studies - A Model for

Europe
Central European University, Budapest
June 22 - July 10, 2009

Many local bills in France and Italy are activated but it is in Bavaria that
the most elaborated system is building up with the activity of a
Zigeunerzentrale and the publication of the Zigeunerbuch in 1905. In
1906, the Federal congress of Switzerland decided to close the border to
vagrants and Gypsies and a special order tryed to impeach every society
of transportation, by rail or by river, to transport those illegal peoples.
In 1908, the control of the borders is reinforced in particular between
Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria-Hungary. The public hate,
amplified by the press, the mistrust of the authorities force many Gypsies
to find new way to escape (falsification of documents, usurpation of
identity) which involve in return an increase of the tensions. In Italy, in
1908, a spontaneous report of a police officer from Tuscany proposed to
establish a simultaneous and general census of all the caravans,
specialised

registers

and

individual

record,

with

anthropometrical

measures and photography. This very interesting document lists all the
reasons why the control of the Gypsies seems impossible: first, it appears
impossible to have any certainty of their identity because they dont have
any documents or they use fake names, they know many Italian dialects
and can easily disappear in the big cities, they across rural territories
where police forces are rare, when the police arrests a caravan, its
impossible for the municipality to maintain animals such as bear or
monkey more than one day, it is impossible to be sure that they are truly
expel from the country.
In 1909, Switzerland takes the initiative of an international
conference in order to resolve the Gypsy question. The project
document for the conference plans to force every Gypsy to be identify and
to create a special certificate with anthropometrical measures on the
German model of the Zigeunerbuch, and also a network of police offices
connected by a central and international service called Central service
for the anthropometrical registration of the Gypsies. But this project
failed because Switzerland wished to nationalise the gypsy populations by
all European states: in this perspective, every country should accept to

Multi-Disciplinary and Cross-National Approaches to Romany Studies - A Model for

Europe
Central European University, Budapest
June 22 - July 10, 2009

integrate as citizen their own Gypsies. Italy, for example, by its minister
of Foreign Affairs, refused to consider that some of this communities were
Italians. The project of this conference failed because all the countries
around Switzerland refused this imposed nationalisation of the Gypsies.
This conference, beside the failure of the project, indicates the passage to
another historical moment for the control of mobility and the beginning of
the internationalisation of the so called Gypsy problem.
In Italy, between 1910 and 1914, the ministry of Interior produced
many texts concerning the individual identification of the Gypsies: a
special individual document created in 1910 and several police document
dedicated to the description of individual, family or caravans. However, it
appears difficult to lead a real control without centralised means of
identification. It is why, from 1909 under the direction of the School of
scientific police in Rome and after a complete reorganisation of the
central police archives, a new category for the Gypsies is created in the
central criminal card-index system. All the files and individual cards were
sent to Rome and inserted in this special administrative category; local
Italian polices were also forced to reinforce the surveillance of the
nomads in border provinces especially. It is in France that the most
drastic measurement intervened with the creation of an anthropometrical
and personal document, on the model used for liberated convicts or by
the colonial administration in order to control special categories such as
civil servants or prostitutes. The system created in France in 1912 after
the law of July 16th, symbolised by this carnet anthropomtrique, is a
massive procedure that theoretically conducted to the control of every
movements of Gypsies from one town to another, all over the country. The
measurements defined by the law, which concerns nearly 10.000 nomads
in France, is imposed on every individual identify as a Bohmien. In
order to prevent kidnapping of children, a circular prescribed the
classification of dactyloscopic cards also for the children from 2 to 13
years.

This

measurement

introduces

very

relevant

rupture

in

identification history : it is in fact one of the very first document of

Multi-Disciplinary and Cross-National Approaches to Romany Studies - A Model for

Europe
Central European University, Budapest
June 22 - July 10, 2009

identity, delivered by the Prefectures, at the same time national and

official, portable, individual and, in the case of the nomads, a familial
document. It is also clearly distinct from the passports used for crossing
the borders. This document introduced in fact the possibility in the
national territory of identity control, by definition permanent and
unforeseen. The diffusion of these documents introduces a new mode of
suspicion which concern social categories of the population, stigmatised
by the obligation of a document which defined them as foreigners. Just
after the French law on nomad population, Switzerlant created in 1913 a
central database of the Gypsies. This national card-index was based on a
special registration procedure called the Zigeunerregistratur made by
civil and signaletic datas and was made especially in order to organise
and planify the expulsion of caravans outside the country. The uses of all
this new police techniques reinforced the identification of the individuals
and created a new coercive framework that theoretically impeached a
free circulation of Gypsy groups. However, the weakness of the polices
forces in rural territories make almost impossible a strong and permanent
control

of

the

migrant

populations.

Consequently,

the

repressive

prescriptions created a large probability of illegalities and many

possibilities to escape from the discontinuous police network.
An emblematic case in 1907 : polices borders, press reception and
process of restriction
From an emblematic case which took place in France and
Switzerland in 1907, and a series of other cases during the period 19071914, I would like to insist today on one of the major hypothesis of my
project that considered the period before the beginning of the First Word
War as a turning point. Some elements concerning this period are already
well known : a negative press campaign that created a series of
discriminating stereotypes regarding the Gypsies, the creation of special
laws and special police structures such as the Gypsy police office in
Bavarian State or the establishing of the personnal and anthropometrical

Multi-Disciplinary and Cross-National Approaches to Romany Studies - A Model for

Europe
Central European University, Budapest
June 22 - July 10, 2009

identity document called carnet anthropomtrique resulting of the

french law of July 1912.
In November 1906, an article entitled The Gypsies, again,
published in the Journal of Geneva, described with very powerful
expressions the situation of the Gypsies at this time specifically in
Switzerland but more generally in Europe at the beginning of the 20 th
Century:
The polices of the provinces (cantons) play with this people as if
they were some kind of balloons. As testified by this caravan, last
year, forced to stay during the night in the middle of a bridge
because, at the two sides of the bridge, there were military police
troups (gendarmes) from two different provinces that tried to
impeach the invasion of their own territories.1
The fact quoted in this article, a caravan forced to stay in the middle of a
bridge, surrounding by two different police forces in Switzerland, doesnt
seem exceptional case but more generally a common situation at a
European scale. The Gypsies travelling in Western Europe from one
country to another became in fact prisoners in a undefined political and
national space, forced to stay in a more and more provisory position. In
Switzerland, in 1906, many caravans crossed the country from Italy,
France or Germany and this situation provoked the adoption of several
police orders that declared that the passage of foreign Gypsies was
definitively forbidden. One of this order declared that it is strictly
forbidden to transport Gypsies, their caravans and animals, inside the
country. In December 1906, at the border between the province of
Fribourg and Bern, the police authorities and the population established
a surveillance line in the countryside in order to impeach the circulation
of a caravan of Gypsies. The same month, in the North border with
Alsace, many caravans tried to enter in Switzerland and the Gendarmerie
1

Encore les Tsiganes , Le Journal de Genve, 25 novembre 1906 : Les polices

cantonales jouent la balle avec ces gens, tmoin la caravane qui passa la nuit sur un
pont lanne dernire parce que, chaque bout du pont, il y avait des gendarmes de
deux cantons diffrents, qui empchaient linvasion de leur territoire .

Multi-Disciplinary and Cross-National Approaches to Romany Studies - A Model for

Europe
Central European University, Budapest
June 22 - July 10, 2009

impeach their entrance in the country. Those multiple cases provoked the
organisation, in March 1907, of an intercantonal conference with the
authorities of all the Province of Switzerland. It seems that this meeting
decided that every province will keep their own Gypsies and stop the
migrations to the other provinces of the federation. After the conference,
preventive arrests of Gypsies are decided by the authorities. For the first
time, the federal congress discussed in June 1907 the necessity to involve
the European countries in order to organise an international resolution
of this obsessive Gypsy Question (cette obsdante question des
tziganes) as called by the main newspaper of Switzerland.
In July 1907, two German Gypsies asked the German consulate in
Geneva for a visa in order to reach the German territory. But the German
consulate of Geneva was not allowed to delivered any visa of that kind
and accepted to give them a Zwangpass, a personnal document which
only permitted to travel through Switzerland in ten days. However they
decided, with the rest of their family, to reach the border with France
close to Geneva. At this point, all the caravan were stopped in a very
small village called Moillesulaz that correspond to a bridge between the
two country. It is important to mention that this small village was already
a regular step in the circulation of the Gypsies. In the same place, in
1899, a caravan was already arrested by the police and a pox epidemy
provoked a truly panic through the population, the intervention of
military troops and a strong sanitary surveillance. This fact and the
memory of those events surely participated to the negative reactions to
the presence of the Gypsies. But on the other side of the bridge, the
French Gendarmes who knew about this Gypsies who where in France
few weeks before decided to closed the access to the bridge. In the same
time the gendarmerie from Geneva do exactly the same thing and the
caravan remain surrounded by all the police authorities of the place. Few
days after, other caravans converged in the same village and the entire
group tried to cross the border illegally. The journal of Geneva explain to
their readers : This a new invasion of barbarians (cest une vritable

10

Multi-Disciplinary and Cross-National Approaches to Romany Studies - A Model for

Europe
Central European University, Budapest
June 22 - July 10, 2009

invasion renouvele des Hans). No solution appeared and the group of

caravans was moved to another place far away of villages and local
populations. A journalist from this newspaper make a remarkable
statement of the daily life in this spontaneous camp of Gypsies. He
opposed the police agents. I quote : that is the civilisation, that us and
the Gypsies called the vagrants: they smoke while the diplomats are
busy, while they exchanges letters and official documents, while police
agents sent telegraphs, they continue to smoke peacefully. Writers and
journalist,

police

agents,

members

of

different

offices

of

the

administrations visited the place but no solution is taken and all the
caravans stayed around the bridge during more than three weeks. At the
end of July 1907, the minister of Interior of France is forced to accept
them into the French territory in order to avoid a diplomatic clash. The
condition of this agreement is the organisation by several police agencies
of an itinerary following the East border and directed to Germany. The
weakness of the French authorities are strongly criticised by many
newspapers of the time and especially by local member of the parliament.
One of them, the deputy of Savoie called Fernand David, sent an official
report in October 1907 to the chief of the French governement. He
denounced the impotency of French authorities and ask for a real
international protection against the Gypsies described as a plague : he
blamed the minister of Interior for his tolerance and denounced the
international thieves that represented for him the Gypsies who
acrossed without any real control the borders of France. One month later,
all the Gypsies of this group are arrested again in the Jura and they are
identify by anthropometric measures : most of them appeared already
convicted as criminals in France and guilty of several low crimes and
guilty of infringement to the vagrancy laws. With the help of the Parisian
service of identification, the complete list of identities and crimes
committed by this Gypsies should normally facilitate their expulsion to
Germany. Some of them are arrested and stay in prison for small period.
However, the German police impeached the rest of the Gypsies to came

11

Multi-Disciplinary and Cross-National Approaches to Romany Studies - A Model for

Europe
Central European University, Budapest
June 22 - July 10, 2009

into the country and a new conflict is created this time between French
and German polices. Then in September 1907, the circle is almost
completed when the French police tried to expel the same caravans to
Switzerland where the police stop them one more time. After an illegal
passage in another point of the border, the caravans return in France.
This story is not isolated. Between 1907 and 1913, many cases of
vagrant groups and Gypsies created multiple tensions between Italian
and Austrian police authorities. An in-deep study of the police archives in
Italy show an increasingly number of cases that revealed the strategies
adopted by the agents in order to expel the people from their country. A
silent war is creating by the new rules on expulsion that concern Gypsies
but also foreigners considered as criminal or suspects. The most
astonishing case probably happened in October 1907 when a caravan
with 8 people is immobilized right behind the border landmark at the
border between France and Belgium : during seven months two squads of
French and Belgium Gendarmes stay at this point, build some barracks in
order to survey one family of Gypsies.
The immediate consequences of thoses cases are the project of law
realised

by

the

French

parliament

for

reinforcement

of

the

identification and the control of the Gypsies, using new signaletic forms
and individual authorisation and passport for circulation ; this is exactly
the first version of the restrictive law adopted later in 1912 which created
the obligation to carry the special carnet anthropometrique. In
Switzerland, the year 1908 appears also as a crucial moment when a
project emerged to create a permanent and international police office
responsible for the identification and the control of all the Gypsies in
Europe. An international conference is projected and many countries
were involved in this process but, for many reasons, the conference never
took place. In 1913, the Departement of police in Zwitzerland decided to
centralised all the information on Gypsies in a centralise card-index using
a system of registration called Zigeunerregistratur.

12

Multi-Disciplinary and Cross-National Approaches to Romany Studies - A Model for

Europe
Central European University, Budapest
June 22 - July 10, 2009

As the story of this impossible circulation of this caravan exemplify,

the period of the years 1907-1914 appear as major moment in the history
of the Gypsy policing. The unknown part of the problem is probably
situated in the global circulation of the Gypsies in Europe : what is in fact
the real effect of the end of Gypsy slavery in Romania in the middle of the
19th Century in the east of Europe on the Gypsy migrations in the
beginnning of the 20th Century ? What was the effects of this new
circulation

in

the

fragile

balance

between

the

different

Gypsy

communities in West Europe?

One the other hand, what we know can be considered as a solid
base of investigation. At the very beginning of the 20 th Century, a
discriminating definition of citizenship restricted progressively transborder migrations and the new principle of nationality mechanically
stigmatised Gypsies, who were suddenly considered as foreigners.
Paradoxically, this gradual tightening of the borders produced an
increasingly frequent practice of expelling caravans in transit from one
country to another. These multiple movements of population tended to
alarm the control authorities, generally represented by police officers,
which resulted in proliferating regulations, either local police bills or
national laws and decrees. An incomparable source represented by the
local and national press newspaper reflects year after year the
increasingly

number

of

cases:

invasion,

multiplication,

uncontrollable are the words continuously associated to the Gypsies.

From the years 1907-1914, the politicisation, at a European level, of this
new Gypsy Question was compounded by defining vagrancy in criminal
terms and assigning Gypsies a specific racial identity, under the influence
of

criminal

anthropology,

legal

sociology,

and

social

hygiene.

Progressively, the Gypsy issue became both a political and diplomatic

issue and a policing and international problem.
From the part of the States, the trans-national circulation of the
Gypsies reveals the incompetence of the rural police and of the
gendarmerie faced to mobile populations, the absence of a centralise and

13

Multi-Disciplinary and Cross-National Approaches to Romany Studies - A Model for

Europe
Central European University, Budapest
June 22 - July 10, 2009

national police that can managed and organised a central card-index

system. The direct consequence are the research by police expert of
better communication system through police journal or police techniques
of communication usefull for the transmission of signaletic description,
pictures or simple police order. The inefficiency of the expulsions reveals
also the problem of the border control and the juridical definition of the
expulsion at the scale of international laws and juridictions. All this
elements provoked the progressive mutation of the gypsy control to a
nominative and daily control of the individuals and a familial and
permanent census of those mobile populations. Of course the free
circulation remain a reality in West Europe until the 1930s, but the
temptations of a permanent control existed already before WWI.
One word on the consequences of this situation for the Gypsy
populations : it provoked an acceleration of the mobility and the
reduction of the stays during the regular circulation. In a long run
perspective, it is possible to say that the mobility of the Gypsies in West
Europe was part of the social and economical balance in rural territories
and that the Gypsies build economical and cultural relationship with the
rural and also urban population. At the beginning of the 20 th Century, this
balance seems to be almost brooked by the new quality and nature of
control practices by the State. Some Reactions could be to resist to
identification methods by disturbing the system of identity documents
with fake documents, destruction or inappropriate uses. Another reaction
was also to rebuild the balance between visibility and invisibility in public
space on front of population and authorities : exhibition or also
provocation became a possibility to be protected from repression or
abuse. But more generally, the development of new forms of control
provoked the growth of incertitude, fragmentation of solidarity network, a
rupture of the social links inside the Gypsy society and also in the relation
with non-Gypsy society.

14

Multi-Disciplinary and Cross-National Approaches to Romany Studies - A Model for

Europe
Central European University, Budapest
June 22 - July 10, 2009

The First World War upsets the conditions of displacements in

Europe, and in particular in France and Italy. The borders, the zones of
combat, the cities, the strategic places are particularly supervised. As
recalled by Stefan Zweig in his autobiography, the war introduces a new
mode of circulation: all humiliations that formerly were invented only for
the criminals are now inflicted to all of the travellers, before and during
their trip. As this quotation suggests, the changing of the control forms
during the war is the result of the bureaucratic inflection of the
identification services and the result of an massive extension of the
categories concerned by identification procedures. From the end of the
19th century, the State invests a new field of activity: the management of
the identity documents and the police files. These archives make it
possible to exert, in an indirect way, a specific control on people. This
historical process which starts during the 18 th Century is reinforce
around the first world war by two main revolutions, one technologic and
the other bureaucratic. This changing creates the possibility to control
categories who were exclude to any form of regulation before this time.
The example of the Gypsy mobility control reveals also a very important
aspect of this revolution : the coincidence between the bureaucratic
reinforcement of police memory and the appearance of many strategy of
resistance and tentative to escape from the control network create a very
relevant tension. In order to answer to this strategies, the police
institutions develop many new identification techniques and also, by a
flexible administrative police, the permanent possibility of arbitrary
measures as internment in concentration camp or complete restriction of
mobility.

15

Multi-Disciplinary and Cross-National Approaches to Romany Studies - A Model for

Europe
Central European University, Budapest
June 22 - July 10, 2009

References
About, Ilsen. 2007. Histoire dun vagabond, les vies de Rodolfo Kreinitz.
La police didentification dans lItalie des annes 1910. Dans Gens
de passage en Mditerrane de lAntiquit lpoque moderne.
Procdures de contrle et didentification, d. Claudia Moatti et
Wolfgang Kaiser, 481-512. Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose.
Albrecht, Angelika. 2002. Zigeuner in Altbayern 1871-1914 : eine sozial-,
wirtschafts- und verwaltungsgeschichtliche Untersuchung der
bayerischen Zigeunerpolitik. Munchen: Kommission fur Bayerische
Landesgeschichte.
Asseo, Henriette. 1994. Les Tsiganes. Une destinee europeenne. Paris:
Gallimard.
---. 1999. La perception des Tsiganes en France et en Allemagne, 18701930. Dans Les exclus en Europe : 1830-1930, d. Andre Gueslin et
Dominique Kalifa, 221-233. Paris: ditions de lAtelier.
---. 2002. La gendarmerie et lidentification des "Nomades" (1870-1914).
Dans Gendarmerie, tat et Socit au XIXe sicle, d. Jean-Nol
Luc, 301-311. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne.
---. 2007. Linvention des Nomades en Europe au XXe sicle et la
nationalisation impossible des Tsiganes. Dans Lidentification des
personnes. Gense dun travail dtat, d. Gerard Noiriel, 161-180.
Paris: Belin.
Ayass,
Wolfgang.
1988.
Feinderklarung
und
Pravention
:
Kriminalbiologie, Zigeunerforschung und Asozialenpolitik. Berlin:
Rotbuch Verlag.
Bonillo, Marion. 2001. "Zigeunerpolitik" im Deutschen Kaiserreich, 18711918. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Egger, Franz. 1982. Der Bundesstaat und die fremden Zigeuner in der
Zeit von 1848 bis 1914. Studien und Quellen, no. 8: 49-74.
Filhol, Emmanuel. 2004. Un camp de concentration francais. Les
Tsiganes alsaciens-lorrains a Crest, 1915-1919. Grenoble: Presses
Universitaires de Grenoble.
---. 2006. Les Tsiganes en France : du contrle la rpression (18951946). Revue trimestrielle des droits de lhomme 17, no. 68: 9891008.
---. 2007. La loi de 1912 sur la circulation des "nomades" (Tsiganes) en
France. Revue europenne des migrations internationales 23, no. 2:
135-158.
Hehemann, Rainer. 1987. Die "Bekampfung des Zigeunerunwesens" im
Wilhelminischen Deutschland und in der Weimarer Republik : 18711933. Frankfurt am Main: Haag & Herchen.
Huonker, Thomas. 2004. "Jusqu la ceinture dans le grand marais".
Roma, Sinti et Yniches en Suisse, quelques aspects dune
perscution de longue dure . Le cartable de Clio, no. 4: 130-136.
Huonker, Thomas, Ludi, Regula. 2009. Roms, Sintis et Yniches, La
16

Multi-Disciplinary and Cross-National Approaches to Romany Studies - A Model for

Europe
Central European University, Budapest
June 22 - July 10, 2009

"politique tsigane" suisse lpoque du national-socialisme,

Lausanne, ditions Page deux.
Lucassen, Leo. 1996. Zigeuner. Die Geschichte eines polizeilichen
Ordnungsbegriffes im Deutschland, 1700-1945. Weimar: Bhlau.
---. 1997a. The Gypsy and the State: The Ethnic Cleansing of British
Society, 2nd Edn. New community. 23, no. 1: 140.
---. 1997b. "Harmful tramps". Police Professionalization and Gypsies in
Germany, 1700-1945. Crime, Histoire & Socits 1, no. 1: 29-50.
---. 2008. Between Hobbes and Locke. Gypsies and the limits of the
modernization paradigm. Social History 33, no. 4: 423-441.
Lucassen, Leo, Wim Willems, et Annemarie Cottaar. 1998. Gypsies and
Other Itinerant Groups. A Socio-Historical Approach. Basingstoke:
Macmillan.
Mayall, David. 1988. Gypsy-Travellers in Nineteenth-Century Society.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
---. 1995. English Gypsies and State Policies. Paris, Hatfield: Centre de
recherches tsiganes, University of Hertfordshire Press.
Nord, Deborah. 2006. Gypsies & the British Imagination, 1807-1930. New
York: Columbia University Press.
Oesterle, Gnter. 1996. "Guai a tutti i poveri in terra straniera". Gli
zingari perseguitati come metafora della poesia romantica in
pericolo. La Ricerca Folklorica, no. 33: 59-65.
Piazza, Pierre. 2002. Au cur de la construction de ltat moderne.
Socio-gnse du carnet anthropomtrique des nomades. Les
Cahiers de la scurit, no. 48: 207-227.
Strauss, Eva. 1986. Die Zigeunerverfolgung in Bayern 1885 -1926.
Gieener Hefte fr Tsiganologie 3, no. 1-4: 31-108.
Uerlings, Herbert, et Iulia-Karin Patrut, d. 2008. Zigeuner und Nation:
Reprsentation - Inklusion - Exklusion. Frankfurt am Main: Peter
Lang.
Wagniart, Jean-Franois. 1999. Le vagabond a la fin du XIXe siecle. Paris:
Belin.
Wlislocki, Heinrich. 1994. Zur Ethnographie der Zigeuner in
Sudosteuropa : tsiganologische Aufsatze und Briefe aus dem
Zeitraum 1880-1905. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Zimmermann, Michael, d. 2007. Zwischen Erziehung und Vernichtung.
Zigeunerpolitik und Zigeunerforschung im Europa des 20.
Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

17