Old Ghosts/New Regrets

Drift and Fragile Life Trajectories in the Context of the Pandemic

Abstract

With the onset of the pandemic, the precarious position of Roma communities in Bulgaria, particularly young people and their future prospects, seem bleaker than ever before, reaching new heights in terms of their insecurity. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, conducted prior to and post several lockdowns during the pandemic (2020-2021), this paper will place forward the argument that the crisis we are currently witnessing, the unprecedented levels of multi-faceted social marginalization and exclusion are intensified by ‘old ghosts’ that have haunted social policy for decades and the withdrawal of the state during the lockdowns will most certainly have a devastating impact – ‘new regrets’, one’s which cannot be overcome by simply providing access to the consumer market economy, the mantra on which the pathways towards revitalization are premised.