Cast out of nations. Inventing the “stateless Gypsy” in Interwar European legal debates

Through the study of a collection of essays related to statelessness, refugee and nationality laws, the analysis focuses on the legal definition of so-called gypsy populations and the construction of a category of “stateless Gypsy” in Interwar Europe. The critical examination of this corpus shows the recycling of old prejudices that involved the stereotyped image of a structural nomadism, aiming to define a group supposedly detached from any national belonging. Therefore, the Roma presence in Europe seems to have been assimilated to a legal incongruity and an historical enigma. The article includes the analysis of a proposal made in 1936 by a renowned French lawyer intending to put so-called Gypsy people, considered both unexpellable and undesirable, into camps.