Begging
16-06-2008

Today 11^th of June MetroXpress (a Danish newspaper) has focus on Romas and begging in Denmark, where projekt UDENFOR’s chairman of the board also has been quoted. (Read the article here: www.metroxpress.dk/dk/article/2008/06/11/08/4427-66/index.xml). The article especially brings into focus the police’s enhanced search for Romas and their seemingly criminal activities.

projekt UDENFOR has been interested in begging as a phenomenon in nearly 11 years and has done research on the matter too. (You can find the reports here). Since the beginning of 2007 we have also intensified our attention when it comes to what internationally is defined as undocumented migrants. To us undocumented migrants are foreign homeless people without citizenships or residence permits and we have a special interest in these people, and begging in this context is seemingly very new.

We meet new groups of foreign homeless people in our daily work, and as it is stated in the quote by Preben Brandt in MetroXpress today, we will in the nearest future look more into this phenomenon because it is very important to know the background for the different kinds of homelessness, if we want to put and end to it.

In MetroXpress today there is also an interview with the historian Miljana Muncan, who runs the webpage Romnet.dk that gathers knowledge on Romas. (Read the article here: www.metroxpress.dk/dk/article/2008/06/11/09/5259-66/index.xml).

Miljana Mincan has a background as a Roma herself and is born and raised in Denmark. As a child her parents advised her not to flaunt her Roma background and the explanation to this is, according to her, the many prejudges on Romas, which have existed throughout the last 1000 years and still exist all around the world. Regarding these prejudges she says: “it is not about culture, but about social misfortune. It is absurd to think that it can be an improvement of one’s living conditions to come here and beg with amputated legs on a skateboard on Strøget.”

Tuesday 4^th of June 2008 our volunteers in projekt UDENFOR had the pleasure of attending a lecture on begging in Russia by Andrey Lukjanov Rasmussen, ph.d. in Sociology, who at the moment is writing his ph.d. in Finland regarding migration policies. Andrey L. Rasmussen has been living in Denmark several times since 2001 and besides his interest in migrations policies, he has taught social workers sociology and anthropology in Sct. Petersburg and has among other things also done some research on the importance of language for people’s identity in Finland.

His experience and knowledge on begging in Russia is mainly achieved on his own observations, information from the police and the media coverage. Knowledge on begging in Russia can contribute to put the analysis, which the Danish police has made on begging and crime in Denmark and that MetroXpress is quoting the police for today, into perspective.   

It is not just Romas who are begging in Russia, which also is the case in Denmark. People who beg are a mixed group, but as the Danish beggars are more passive in their procedure, the Russian beggars are more active, according to Andrey L. Rasmussen. The report, ”Folk fra Romania som tigger i Oslo” (In English: “People from Romania who beg in Oslo”), also pays attention to this difference (You can read more here in Danish). 

Begging arise for one because of the open borders between the countries and the migration which follows this, and according to Andrey L. Rasmussen begging can from a migration point of perspective be compared to trafficking. He believes that 10 pct. of the begging in Russia is “real” begging, while the rest is controlled by wirepullers. The wirepullers use among others war veterans from Chechenia and handicapped in order to evoke pity in people. They buy “beggars” in consideration of who will evoke guilty consciousness and thus the most money – money, which in the end will end up in the wirepullers’ own pockets.

“Beggars” are exported to the European countries and among others are Germany, France and Italy popular destinations for the wirepullers – the latter two because of the lack of police surveillance. The wirepullers, who most often are from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, are very strategic in their methods, and send off war veterans to France because it works there, because the French are more critical towards the war in Chechenia. In Italy the Albanians control the market. In Germany the wirepullers have used puppies in their procedures, which they killed when the dogs no longer were puppies/”cute”. This was documented in TV, which destroyed the wirepullers’ method. 

Begging and unemployment have been prohibited in Russia until 1993. Today it is illegal to use children under the age of 14 for begging, but it is not illegal to be a wirepuller or to beg, and it thus becomes a gray zone. The Russian police, who according to Andrey L. Rasmussen are very corrupt especially in Moscow and Sct. Petersburg, are however trying to punish the beggars in other ways – for instance by referring to propiska (You can read about propiska here in Danish)

In Russia begging is trafficking and “beggars” are sold for instance from community homes for handicapped. The handicapped are also tempted with adds regarding fictional arrangements, where they for instance can meet other handicapped. Al this is very similar to the way trafficking with women are done (You can read more here in Danish). Parents with alcohol problems sometimes also sell their children to wirepullers, even though it is illegal to beg as a child. 

Open borders and open markets have negative consequences for exposed and poor people in the world, when they end up as prey for wirepullers. To what extent begging as trafficking has found its way to Denmark is hard to say, and we will thus in projekt UDENFOR look into this challenge. We do not believe that the problem can be solved by defining it as a criminal action, which the analysis from the police (cf. the article in MetroXpress) might tempt people to considerate.             

Serap Erkan