Scrutiny of the socio-economic exclusion of the Roma in Central and Eastern Europe has brought attention to the widespread practice of school segregation of Romani children who are automatically placed in classes for the mentally disabled or shunted into separate and inferior schools and classrooms. It is now widely recognised that such practices adversely affect the educational development of Romani children, which in turn dramatically constrains their possibilities to succeed in adult life. Thus far the legislative changes and political commitments to desegregation and integration measures have delivered limited outputs and outcomes. While national programmes face implementation challenges at the local level, the grassroots initiatives are rarely mainstreamed into wider policy strategies. At the end of the day the status quo is preserved. Given that little analytical effort has been made to explain the causes of desegregation failure, this article aims to address the void. It argues that the narrow desegregation aims prevents creation of comprehensive approaches sensitive to structural dimensions of segregation and discrimination. It builds on the policy design theory in order to capture the impact of discourse and policy content on the implementation outputs.

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PrefaCeDespite the increasing number of policy measures and initiatives targeting the Roma in Europe, their position has continued to worsen. This condition stems from a policy paradox that requires answers from policymakers, activists and academics. This book offers several answers to the question why policies towards Roma in Europe are failing. According to the European Commission, Roma in Europe number between 10 and 12 million people. Roma have been in Europe for centuries, and have been key cultural agents across the continent, both historically and in the present day. At the same time, Roma are Europe's most marginalized minority group. Over the past twenty-five years, numerous policy initiatives have been launched to address the situation of Europe's Roma. The most prominent of these were the national Roma strategies developed by the governments of the then EU candidate member states in Central and East Europe; the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015 initiated by the World Bank and the Open Society Institute and, most recently, the EU Roma Framework introduced in 2011.Currently there are numerous articles published on the situation of the Roma and some focus on the narrower topic of policies towards Roma, but there is no comprehensive approach to policy-making towards the Roma in Europe that takes on the policy paradox described above.A prime cause of the limited impact of these policies on the Roma's situation is the lack of ethnic relevance of these policies, that is, their failure to take into adequate consideration the crucial importance of Romani ethnic identity as a causal factor in the social exclusion and

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