Are all Romanians beggars or thieves ?

In France, if you’re a Romanian meeting new people, you will sometimes (more often than not) experience the following conversation :

Speaker 1 : “So where do you come from ? (curious) You have a small accent…(it reads : ha ! you wanted to pass unnoticed but I did notice that you are actually a foreigner!)”

Romanian speaker : (hesitant already) Romania. (Or originally from Romania).

Speaker 1 : "Ah ! ok."

And then ?

Nothing. Speaker 1 either moves to another person (it is is perfectly acceptable in France to move on to another person if the first one annoys you or has a not-so-interesting conversation) or, if interested, tries to remember something positive they (or their friends, or they family) know about Romania.

So this blog is also meant for those “Speakers 1”, who would like to relate with Romanian people but don’t know how to do it when what they have in their minds all along is red alarm signs screaming : oh no ! Romanian ? But wait, there are plenty of Romanians in the metro, on the street, next to the Champs Elysées, stealing, begging, etc..!

Well, there are actually plenty of Romanians who emigrated, and a large number of them are also in France. If you’re looking for some finesse in identifying them, here’s a short list (moving from the more socially acceptable to the less so) :
  1.   The Romanian academic: There are plenty of Romanian academics in France. Romanians value knowledge, and Romanian academics are valued in France. There is also a long tradition of cultural exchanges between both countries.
  2. The intellectual worker – most of them work in La Défense, like the majority of “cadres” in France. Mostly in IT or engineering.
  3. The Romanian artist – they have more in common with the Artist community in France than with the Romanian community. Some of them have emigrated before 1989 and the end of the communist regime, but a new generation of artists still comes to Paris to get their inspiration & create.
  4. The Romanian construction worker – they are the new “Portuguese”, hard working (in their majority), learning rather quickly French, and mastering various manual skills (plumbing, etc. , )
  5. The Romanian thief – the most “famous” Romanian, in any case the most feared, even though less visible than the Romanian beggar. The Romanian pickpocket has reached international fame, especially amongst Asian tourists – their activity led the French police and the Parisian transportation system to warn travelers about taking care of their valuable objects in 5 (!) different languages.
  6. The Romanian beggar – there is a suspicion that the Romanian beggar is actually a thief in disguise. However the two categories are distinct, because stealing seems to be much more lucrative than begging. Besides, begging is a much more individualistic activity (i.e. a family could do it – even if organized begging is the rule) than stealing.
  7. The Romanian sexual worker – an (usually) beautiful Romanian woman who is a sexual worker, be it in the streets of Paris or its luxury hotels, or both. Romanian is famed for its beautiful (and relatively accommodating) women. They are the category that the majority don’t want to see. They are exploited by organized groups, attracted into this invisible life by (fake) love, (fake) friendship or desire of a better life.


Going forward I’ll do a deep dive in each category – there are even more subcategories – but until then – please comment here if you have identified other categories that you want to discuss. 

Comments

  1. Andrei9 July 2018 at 16:05

    Great list and typologies ! I agree with what you say, and I would suggest adding one category that is maybe not as visible in Paris and its suburbs as it is in Province : the Romanian country doctor/dentist. As my wife is from Burgundy and my
    (Romanian) father lives near Nantes, I have noticed that in both regions many Romanian doctors come in small villages to act as local doctor in these 'medical deserts' where no French doctor wants to practice. In return for agreeing to settle down in these medically deserted places, they get great wages and usually benefits such as a house and vehicle paid for by local administration (on top of their wage) too happy to have a doctor in town. But it usually works for couple of years only as the local life isn't really appealing and they most often than not find better jobs in bigger urban centres...

    Andrei

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. dalvaim24 July 2018 at 07:42

      Good point, thanks for sharing Andrei ! Indeed the Romanian medical system is directly supporting the French one, i.e. a lot of doctors trained in Romania come and practice in France, often in small cities or deserted areas, but also in the big cities. They receive better wages than they would back home, but in return might face challenging working hours (more so than the local doctors), and haughty looks from their colleagues. Until a point where they wouldn't want to advertise their nationality - it recently happened that I had to ask an ER doctor if he spoke other languages in order to be able to interact with him in Romanian (he had a Romanian name and accent, but was reluctant to advertise it, probably due to bad past experiences..)

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

About founding scenes

Every group of people reunited in the borders of a country have a founding scene , coming with their founding figures. For some it is a fight against social injustice, irradiated by knowledge (France), for others it is taking their destiny in one's hand and renovating whatever was considered "normal" until then (United States).  For Romanians, it's all about resistance and resilience . Not active resistance, but passive, ironical, coming from the strong belief that "they have always been there and they will always be there", like in the times when Romans invaded "their" piece of land, when the Huns and the Mongols came by as well - leaving behind a new bloodline, when the Turks appeared, etc.  Don't get me wrong, some peopleactively fought against all those invasions . But the masses knew they had to protect themselves inwardly in order to ensure a future. Therefore these people are ones of the most stoic and resilient I have ever met...
Read more

You won't make it

"You won't make it”. I don't know about you, but I hear that a lot around me. Or told to me. Implied : “Don't do it, it's too risky”/ “Don’t do it you might fail”/”Don’t do it you might suffer” etc.etc. Of course, our internal voices are telling this to us all the time. But when there's - on top of it- a figure of authority saying it, it becomes much more complicated to NOT listen to it. The problem with this statement is not its intentions (to preserve us from something, an indefinite bad which might happen). It's the results - or lack of results I should say. Because experience shows that once you try to do something, you might fail or...you might succeed.   In both cases, experience comes with a key learning : either that you can try, fail, and still feel good about the whole trying experience, either that you can trust yourself because you have proved you can succeed in the past. So, my advice: listen to other people’ advice. But ...
Read more

The modern worker

Going back to the roots of this blog, and the list of Romanians present in France ( do you remember it? ), I will talk today about the “intellectual worker”(or modern worker).  As I was mentioning then, “the intellectual worker” is probably working in La Défense, like most “white collar” workers in France. The majority work in IT or engineering. What’s interesting about this category is its invisibility . Unlike others that “normal” people could cross in the streets of Paris, like Romanian sexual workers, beggars, thieves or construction workers, n o one remembers having crossed the path of a lot of Romanian white collars working in France . However, when I say that I’m Romanian, almost everyone in my friends circle can name at least 1 or 2 Romanians (mostly women) belonging to this category. Which means that they are more invisible than numerous. Why ? Several reasons to that : First of all, they are nor easily identifiable nor easily “taggable”. They look li...
Read more