This special issue showcases work that theorises and critiques the political, economic, legal, and socio-historical ('ethnic' or 'cultural') subordination of the European Roma (so-called 'Gypsies'), from the specific critical vantage point of Roma migrants living and working within and across the space of the European Union (EU). Enabled primarily through ethnographic research with diverse Roma communities across the heterogeneous geography of 'Europe', the contributions to this collection are likewise concerned with the larger politics of mobility as a constitutive feature of the sociopolitical formation of the EU. Foregrounding the experiences and perspectives of Roma living and working outside of their nation-states of 'origin' or ostensible citizenship, we seek to elucidate wider inequalities and hierarchies at stake in the ongoing (re-)racialisation of Roma migrants, in particular, and imposed upon migrants, generally. Thus, this special issue situates Roma mobility as a critical vantage point for migration studies in Europe. Furthermore, this volume shifts the focus conventionally directed at the academic objectification of 'the Roma' as such, and instead seeks to foreground and underscore questions about 'Europe', 'European'-ness, and EU-ropean citizenship that come into sharper focus through the critical lens of Roma racialisation, marginalisation, securitisation, and criminalisation, and the dynamics of Roma mobility within and across the space of 'Europe'. In this way, this collection contributes new research and expands critical interdisciplinary dialogue at the intersections of Romani studies, ethnic and racial studies, migration studies, political and urban geography, social anthropology, development studies, postcolonial studies, and European studies. Central to our approach in this special issue is a desire to re-situate questions of Roma mobility, and the consequently fluid and contradictory sociopolitical dynamics of Roma racial subordination, at the heart of any critical enquiry regarding 'Europe'. Roma mobility is particularly central to questions concerning EU-ropean citizenship, the borders of EUrope, the so-called 'migrant crisis' in Europe, and the rise of far-right, anti-immigrant racist populism across the space of Europe. That is to say, rather than fetishise research about 'the Roma' as such, as an essentialised 'ethnic group' to be studied in isolation, we insist that there can be literally no adequate investigation into the very meanings of 'Europeanness' or the politics of 'European' identity in the presumably wider field of

The failure to include and/or identify social subgroups of the population can undermine the value of research, including, in the case of the study prison, funded health research. This can compromise associated needs assessments and service delivery, particularly important in already disadvantaged populations; this may encourage and/or perpetuate a range of health inequalities. There is a pressing need to examine cultural exclusion in other health and criminal justice settings, to assess the ways in which-and the extent to which-such exclusion may compromise the merit of proposed and completed health and social research.