Some 500,000 Roma live in this small country in Central Europe, bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south. And of them, 7,000 Roma live in the Lunik IX neighborhood, in the Slovak city of Kosice, —considered a true ghetto in the heart of Europe.

When the Slovak authorities decided to carry out the census of its population last year, they allowed the citizenship to register and to indicate their belonging to up to two nationalities. This was controversial, especially among groups belonging to ethnic minorities. Obviously, citizens of Hungarian descent opposed the possibility to include a second nationality. However, a total of 5,153,712 inhabitants responded to the nationality question.

The majority of the Hungarians mentioned a single nationality, 422,100 of them (7.75% of the respondents), while the people who mentioned their nationality as Roma came in second place.

Agraduate in both Sociology and Infirmary, 27-year-old Fatlum Kryeziu’s is one of many members of Kosovo’s minority communities with higher educational qualifications seeking a job in vain. For this member of the Roma community, having university diplomas in his CV has not helped at all. Kryeziu says he has applied multiple times for a job in public institutions, without success. The most frequent answer he has received for rejection was that a Bachelor’s degree is not enough for the positions he has applied for.

Many other young people from his community have a similar problem.

Even if highly educated, they remain on the fringes of mainstream society, as well as being targets of anti-Gypsy prejudice and discrimination.

Kosovo’s Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities have faced problems with employment for years. Even with university degrees, they remain excluded from society.

Link: https://balkaninsight.com/2022/01/25/not-wanted-roma-graduates-remain-jobless-in-kosovo/?fbclid=IwAR0d4KNDQG-yoqKoFLm41VPzgGK5cT--l7oh-XNwS1_zAdFHEH3valCqxcU