On April 10, 2025, the European Union Center welcomed Dr. Magda Matache (Lecturer on Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Director and co-founder of the Roma Program at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights) for a special International Roma Day brown bag talk. In her lecture, “Structural Racism and Health Inequities: The Case of Roma People in Europe,” Dr. Matache sheds light on how anti-Roma racism continues to shape the lives, health, and well-being of Roma communities across Europe.
While these effects might appear scattered or incidental at first glance, she argues that they are, in fact, manifestations of a larger, deeply embedded system of structural oppression. From unequal access to healthcare to everyday societal exclusion, these patterns reveal a coordinated and enduring form of racism that has operated—largely unchecked—for centuries.
Dr. Matache traces the roots of this violence back to the Middle Ages, when Roma people arriving in Europe were enslaved, hunted, expelled, and denied basic recognition. Over time, these brutal practices were “rationalized” through religious doctrine, scientific racism, and state policy. Whether through eugenics, racialized communism, or pseudoscientific narratives, Roma bodies were cast as deviant, dangerous, and undeserving of full citizenship. These narratives haven’t disappeared; they’ve simply mutated.
One of the most chilling examples came from a recent case in Romania, where a Roma woman in labor was denied care and told she was disturbing the staff’s sleep. “Structural racism doesn’t always look like violence in the streets,” Dr. Matache reminded us. “Sometimes, it looks like no one looking at you. No one listening.” It’s the quiet devaluation of life. The shrug. The silence. The unwritten policy.
One of Dr. Matache’s most powerful contributions is her rejection of liberal frameworks of racism—those that define racism as personal bias or something solvable through diversity training. Instead, she draws from a structuralist tradition, aligned with thinkers like Frantz Fanon and Arun Kundnani. In this model, racism is not a glitch in the system. It is the system itself. It operates through bureaucracies, public health institutions, erasures in history, and biased scientific knowledge production.
This isn’t just a European issue. Dr. Matache’s analysis compels us to think globally:
• Who is granted health?
• Who is rendered grievable?
• Whose lives are protected, and whose are quietly sacrificed?
The anti-Roma racism she outlines resonates powerfully with other racialized systems of oppression—from Black maternal mortality in the U.S., to Indigenous health disparities in settler colonial contexts. These outcomes aren’t coincidental. They are designed.
Listening to this talk was a reminder that systemic racism isn’t always loud. Sometimes, it whispers. Sometimes, it lingers in the silence of a waiting room. Or in the shrug of a nurse. Or in the policy that was never written, but always understood.
Roma health disparities cannot be dismissed as unfortunate side effects.
They are the results of design.
And if we can name that design, we can begin to dismantle it.
The recording of Dr. Matache's lecture can be found here. For resources on conducting research on Roma in Europe, please see the "Multicultural Europe" library guide.
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