Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the emergence of “Roma health and wellbeing” as a focus of attention in European research and in policy and the possible detrimental consequences of action founded on a generic representation of “Roma health.” Design/methodology/approach Based on discussions with and research conducted by scholars who work directly with Roma communities across European regions from a wide range of academic disciplines it suggests how future research might inform: a more nuanced understanding of the causes of poor health and wellbeing among diverse Roma populations and; actions that may have greater potential to improve the health and wellbeing among these populations. Findings In summary, the authors promote three types of research: first critical analyses that unpick the implications of current and past representations of “Roma” and “Roma health.” Second, applied participatory research that meaningfully involves people from specific self-defined Roma populations to identify important issues for their health and wellbeing. Third, learning about processes that might impact on the health and wellbeing of Roma populations from research with other populations in similarly excluded situations. Originality/value The authors provide a multidisciplinary perspective to inform research that does not perpetuate further alienation and prejudice, but promotes urgent action to redress the social and health injustices experienced by diverse Roma populations across Europe.

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According to the sociologists Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens, modern societies have become increasingly preoccupied with the future and safety and have mobilized themselves in order to manage systematically what they have perceived as “risks” (Beck 1992; Giddens 1991). This special section investigates how conceptions of risk evolved in Europe over the course of the twentieth century by focusing on the creation and evolution of social policy. The language of risk has, in the past twenty years, become a matter of course in conversations about social policy (Kemshall 2002). We seek to trace how “risk” has served as a heuristic tool for understanding and treating “social problems.” A key aim of this collection is to explore the character of social policy (in the broadest sense) as an instrument (or technology) that both constructs its own objects as the consequences of “risks” and generates new “risks” in the process (Lupton 2004: 33). In this way, social policy typifies the paradox of security: by attempting literally to making one “carefree,” or sē (without) curitās (care), acts of (social) security spur new insecurities about what remains unprotected (Hamilton 2013: 3–5, 25–26). Against this semantic and philological context, we suggest that social policy poses an inherent dilemma: in aiming to stabilize or improve the existing social order, it also acts as an agent of change. This characteristic of social policy is what makes particularly valuable studies that allow for comparisons across time, place, and types of political regime. By examining a range of cases from across Europe over the course of the twentieth century, this collection seeks to pose new questions about the role of the state; ideas about risk and security; and conceptions of the “social” in its various forms.

Lim and Rosenhaft introduce “mnemonic solidarity” as a scholarly and political program, situating it in the context of the wider project and publication series “Entangled Memories in the Global South.” Their programmatic approach arises from the observation that a global memory formation has emerged since the late twentieth century, involving interchanges of various kinds between national memory cultures and structured by the terms of Holocaust memory. This development and its political implications have been addressed in various ways by scholars under the rubrics of “cosmopolitan,” “multidirectional,” “traveling,” “prosthetic,” “transnational,” and “agonistic” memory, but the new field of memory studies remains Eurocentric and relatively insensitive to the double-edged character of globalized memory—the interplay between de-territorialization and re-territorialization. This volume aims to reset the agenda.

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