Resolution on Roma and Travellers Students

30.06.2026

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Rationale & Context

Education is a public good and a fundamental right and should serve as a space of equal opportunity, democratic participation and social mobility for all students. As such, equitable access to and participation in higher education are essential preconditions for social justice, inclusion and democratic societies. Yet across Europe, Roma and Travellers communities continue to face systemic barriers that prevent equal participation in education and wider society.

Roma and Travellers communities constitute Europe’s largest ethnic minority (1), while simultaneously remaining among the most marginalized, discriminated and socioeconomically excluded. Roma and Travellers continuously experience disproportionately high rates of poverty – with 70% of Roma and Travellers in Europe currently living at risk of poverty (2) – housing insecurity, segregation and discrimination, all of which directly affect access to education. These inequalities are not isolated or incidental, but rooted in centuries of structural exclusion, institutional discrimination and political exclusion.

At the root of this lies antigypsyism, the most persistent form of oppression directed against Roma and Travellers communities across Europe. Antigypsyism is the historically constructed, persistent complex of customary racism targeted against communities stigmatized as “gypsies” (3). It continues to manifest at both institutional and individual levels, affecting Roma and Travellers students throughout all stages of education.

Roma and Travellers students remain significantly underrepresented within higher education institutions and academic spaces, while Roma and Travellers perspectives, histories and contributions remain largely absent from curricula,institutional practices and student representation. This exclusion particularly affects Roma and Travellers women, LGBTQI+ Roma and Travellers students, Roma and Travellers students with disabilities and students from rural or stateless communities, who often face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination.

For the purpose of this resolution and in line with the terminology employed by the Council of Europe (4), ESU uses Roma and Travellers as an umbrella term encompassing diverse communities across Europe, including Roma, Sinti, Kale, Romanichels, Boyash/Rudari, Ashkali, Egyptians, Yenish, Dom, Lom, Rom and Abdal, Traveller populations and the populations designated under the administrative term “Gens du voyage”, as well as persons identifying themselves as Gypsies, while fully respecting the right to self-identification and the diversity of experiences, identities and realities within Roma and Travellers communities.

Key Challenges

Structural Discrimination and Institutional Responsibility

The exclusion of Roma and Travellers students from higher education is not an isolated educational issue, but the consequence of broader structural inequalities and institutional failures affecting Roma and Travellers communities across Europe. Antigypsyism continues to shape access to housing, healthcare, employment, public service and political participation, creating conditions that systematically limit educational opportunities long before students enter higher education. As a result, Roma and Travellers students often encounter higher education systems that reproduce, rather than challenge, existing social inequalities.

Within higher education institutions, antigypsyism frequently remains invisible, unrecognized or insufficiently addressed. Roma and Travellers students continue to experience discrimination, stereotyping, racial profiling, exclusionary behaviour and microaggressions from peers, academic staff and institutional structures. At the same time, many higher education institutions lack the institutional capacity, accountability mechanisms and commitment necessary to identify and combat antigypsyism and other forms of intersectional discrimination effectively. Existing equality and diversity policies often fail to explicitly address Roma and Travellers communities or recognize antigypsyism as a distinct and structural form of racism, leaving Roma and Travellers students without adequate institutional protection or support.

These challenges are further intensified by the persistent socioeconomic marginalization of Roma and Travellers communities across Europe. High levels of poverty, precarious housing conditions and unequal access to essential public services continue to shape students’ educational experiences and opportunities. The barriers faced by Roma and Travellers students therefore cannot be understood solely through the lens of individual discrimination, but must be recognized as the product of interconnected structural inequalities sustained by institutional neglect and political inaction.

ESU therefore calls upon higher education institutions, national governments and 67 European institutions to:

Recognize Roma and Travellers communities as ethnic minorities and ensure their protection and inclusion within national and European policy frameworks;

Recognize antigypsyism as a structural and institutional form of oppression and a primary barrier to access all levels of education;

Ensure anti-bias and anti-discrimination training for academic and administrative staff including inclusive teaching and support practices;

Ensure that higher education institutions adopt explicit anti-racism and anti discrimination policies addressing antigypsyism;

Remove discriminatory language, stereotypes and racist representations from institutional cultures, curricula and administrative procedures;

Embed the teaching of Roma and Travellers history, culture, and language – including the Roma and Travellers Holocaust and slavery – into the curricula including opportunities for research and cultural expression within higher education;

Develop clear, accessible and trustworthy reporting and accountability mechanisms for cases of discrimination, harassment and exclusion affecting Roma and Travellers students including protection against retaliation, transparent procedures and timely follow-up;

Promote safe and inclusive learning environments for Roma and Travellers students within and beyond formal education.

Educational Pathways and Entry to Higher Education

Despite Roma and Travellers representing Europe’s largest ethnic minorities, their participation in higher education remains drastically below that of the general student population. This gap is not the result of individual choice or capability, but the cumulative product of structural exclusion, persistent antigypsyism and decades of underinvestment in equitable access to education. The barriers Roma and Travellers students face in higher education are rooted in inequalities that emerge much earlier within educational systems. Across Europe, Roma and Travellers children continue to face segregation in schools, erroneous placement in special education institutions, systemic biases and discriminatory assessment practices. According to the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), almost half of Roma and Travellers children attend schools where most or all pupils are Roma and Travellers (5), reflecting persistent educational segregation across Europe. Roma and Travellers pupils are also disproportionately affected by language barriers, limited access to quality education and unequal learning environments, all of which negatively shape later educational opportunities. In addition those living in informal settlements may face additional administrative barriers preventing equal access to education.

Said discriminatory experiences are thought to contribute to comparatively low rates of upper secondary education completion within Roma and Traveller populations. Consequently, the majority of Roma and Travellers youth leave secondary education without having obtained a vocational or general upper secondary qualification. Such qualifications are commonly integral to higher education entry systems, highlighting the importance of alternative access routes in expanding Roma and Travellers participation in Higher Education.

Exclusion from higher education can therefore not be understood separately from broader patterns of spatial segregation and unequal access to quality primary and secondary education. These structural inequalities contribute to lower participation rates in higher education and reinforce unequal access to information, academic preparation and educational opportunities. Students from segregated, rural and socioeconomically disadvantaged communities are particularly affected by limited access to pathways leading towards higher education.

Access to higher education for Roma and Travellers students is therefore constrained long before the moment of application. Nevertheless, entry structures still play an important role in the equity of access. Admission procedures frequently rely on assumptions of cultural, social and economic capital that disadvantage first generation students and marginalized communities. Outreach initiatives by higher education institutions often fail to adequately reach Roma and Travellers communities, while existing widening participation measures remain insufficient to address the structural barriers shaping educational participation. Where targeted access schemes do exist, persistently low enrolment rates demonstrate that these measures are often underfunded, limited in scope or insufficiently connected to broader support systems.

ESU therefore calls upon higher education institutions, national governments and European institutions to: Recognize the impact of segregation, systemic discrimination and educational inequalities on access to higher education for Roma and Travellers students;Strengthen outreach, guidance and transition support programmes for Roma andTravellers students entering higher education, in cooperation with Roma and Travellers-led organizations and communities;

Develop programmes highlighting alternative access routes to higher education, with a particular focus on adult-entry, recognition of prior learning, and similar considerations;
Guarantee inclusive, transparent and bias-free admission procedures that are accessible to first-generation students and students from marginalized and racialised communities; Ensure the specific inclusion of Roma and Travellers in relevant plans or strategies on access to higher education;
Establish fair, adequately funded and transparent targeted access programmes and affirmative measures for Roma and Travellers students, co-designed with Roma and Travellers communities and accompanied by academic and social support mechanisms;
Recognize that equitable access to higher education cannot be achieved without addressing the upstream barriers and structural inequalities that precede it, including through tackling housing segregation, language barriers and unequal access to quality education in primary and secondary education.

Participation, Retention and Completion

Admission to a higher education institution alone does not guarantee equitable participation. Once enrolled, Roma and Travellers students continue to face conditions that undermine retention, well-being and completion. A substantial proportion of Roma and Travellers households experience severe material deprivation, substandard housing and living conditions,barriers to healthcare access. This carries over into student life, where financial precarity remains a defining feature of many Roma and Travellers students, with inadequate grants and scholarships, insecure housing and exclusionary housing markets, and limited access to social support pushing students into long working hours, intensifying care responsibilities and contributing directly to premature dropout.

Said issues are compounded through the increasing digitalization of higher education, and the emergence of a so-called ‘digital divide.’ Roma and Traveller students may have limited access to IT facilities, devices, stable internet connection, and private, quiet places to study.

The absence of Roma and Travellers perspectives, histories, languages and researchers within curricula and academic spaces further contributes to the invisibility of Roma and Travellers communities and undermines students’ sense of belonging within higher education institutions. Inclusive curricula and institutional recognition are therefore essential components of equitable participation and completion.

Mobility programmes such as Erasmus+, a cornerstone of European higher education, remain largely out of reach for Roma and Travellers students, who face financial and administrative barriers as well as well-founded concerns about discrimination in host environments. The cumulative effect is a higher education experience in which Roma and Travellers students are expected to succeed despite the system, rather than being supported by it. ESU therefore calls upon the European Union, national governments and higher education institutions to:

Ensure comprehensive financial support, including needs-based grants, accessible, subsidized student housing and support for students with care responsibilities, so that no Roma and Travellers student is forced to choose between studying and survival; Establish mentoring programmes, Roma and Travellers mediators, accessible counselling and targeted support systems for Roma and Travellers students, and ensure clear, enforceable mechanisms to report and address antigypsyism from peers and staff;
Integrate Roma and Travellers history, cultures, languages and perspectives into curricula, research agendas and institutional activities;
Promote the recruitment, visibility and recognition of Roma and Travellers researchers and academic staff;
Establish national recruitment and retention targets with the aim of increasing Roma and Traveller students’ participation in higher education;
Open mobility programmes to Roma and Travellers students, removing financial, administrative and informational barriers to Erasmus+ and other mobility
schemes, and providing targeted top-up grants and pre-departure support for Roma and Travellers students;
Address structural barriers behind dropout, recognizing equitable access to housing, healthcare, transport and care services as conditions of meaningful participation in higher education, and tackled jointly by HEIs and public authorities.

Representation, Governance and Data Collection

In order to effectively address the structural and systemic barriers faced by Roma and Travellers students, it is essential that they are not treated solely as 207 beneficiaries of policies and support mechanisms, but are meaningfully involved in shaping decisions concerning their education – at all levels. Therefore, the participation and adequate representation of Roma and Travellers students is vital for the design and development of sustainable, inclusive and context-adapted solutions to existing challenges.

Despite this, Roma and Travellers students remain significantly underrepresented within the governance structures of higher education institutions and within national bodies responsible for policies on access, inclusion and participation in higher education. The existing structural barriers often affect even student representative structures, where the limited involvement and participation of Roma and Travellers students constrains the ability of student unions to reflect the grassroots perspectives and lived experiences of Roma and Travellers communities in their advocacy work.

Due to the limited direct involvement of Roma and Travellers students in decision making and policy-development processes, as well as the challenges often faced by student representative bodies in ensuring their meaningful participation and representation, the perspectives and lived experiences of Roma and Travellers students are too often absent from the design, implementation and evaluation of higher education policies affecting them.

Ultimately, Roma and Travellers students are frequently absent from the spaces where policies and measures affecting them are designed and discussed. This creates a significant gap between the lived realities of Roma and Travellers communities in accessing and navigating higher education and the policies intended to address their needs. As a result, these measures often fail to respond to the underlying causes of exclusion and the structural barriers that continue to persist.

Furthermore, the lack of reliable and disaggregate data on Roma and Travellers participation in education continues to undermine the development and evaluation of effective inclusion policies. In several countries, insufficient minority recognition and weak monitoring frameworks further contribute to invisibility and lack of accountability. At the same time, data collection concerning Roma and Travellers communities must be conducted in a safe, voluntary and rights-based manner, fully respecting privacy protections, informed consent, self-identification and the historical risks of misuse and stigmatization associated with ethnic data collection.

ESU believes that the gaps in representation and visibility strongly undermine the effectiveness, inclusiveness and long-term sustainability of initiatives aimed at promoting equal access and participation in higher education for Roma and Travellers communities. Therefore, ESU calls on higher education institutions, national public authorities and European institutions to: Ensure the effective participation and representation of Roma and Travellers students within higher education governance and decision-making structures, while also encouraging and fostering their involvement in student representative bodies;

Ensure that the participation of Roma and Travellers students is meaningful, rather than tokenistic or symbolic engagement practices;
Support and empower Roma and Travellers-led initiatives within higher education; Ensure that policies, measures and initiatives affecting Roma and Travellers students are developed, implemented, monitored and evaluated in close consultation and cooperation with Roma and Travellers students, as equal partners;
Improve ethical and disaggregated data collection concerning Roma and Travellers participation in education while respecting privacy protections and the right to self-identification; Address existing data gaps while preventing misuse or stigmatization of Roma and Travellers communities.

(1) European Commission – Roma equality, inclusion and participation in the EU
(2) FRA – Roma Survey 2024
(3) Antigypsyism – A Reference Paper (June 2017)
(4) https://www.coe.int/en/web/roma-and-travellers/about-us#1
(5) FRA – Roma Survey 2024

Reason & Seconders

As per Plan of Work 2025-2026 5.2. “Resolution on Roma, Sinti, and Travellers Community Students” ESU has drafted a resolution addressing the situation of Roma and Travellers students in Europe, analyzing the challenges they face and calling for actions to challenge the status quo and improve the situation of Roma and Travellers students in Europe’s higher education landscape.