“I can only work cash-in-hand [načerno] for the rest of my life,” Nina* told me as we were sitting in her kitchen drinking black coffee. She was rolling cigarettes from tobacco purchased in half kilogram packages after Ivan had left for his afternoon shift.

Nina was very helpful in advising me where to look for jobs,  where to get the fit-for-work certificate and other required paperwork. She herself was unemployed. I sometimes tried to reciprocate by sharing with her some job openings I was aware of, until she matter-of-factly clarified one day that the size of her debts rendered any attempt of formal employment unfeasible. She would end up with less money than she had while being on benefits and occasionally taking cash-in-hand jobs without a contract. She estimated that her debt installments would come to at least half of her monthly wage.

Despite the stigma built around the trope of “excessive” spending by the Roma and their supposed lack of consideration for the future, the pathways to indebted lives that I observed had little to do with culture and a lot to do with the operation of capital. Most people would end up having debts because of various forms of non-payments: failures to pay transport fines; a failure to pay alimony after separation from a partner; non-payment for waste collection or utility bills; non-payment of compulsory health insurance during the times of unemployment.

Danek is a 28 year-old Roma man living in one of the hostels for low-income persons and families in “northern” Ostrava. During one of our conversations in late December 2016, he told me how he incurred significant debt for a failure to pay his health insurance when he was unemployed and the Labour Office removed him from the job-seekers’ register when he failed to show up for an appointment. He was not sure how much he owed.

When a family or an individual incurred unexpected expenses or simply did not get by one month, they had to turn to credit. A solution that was supposed to be temporary has turned permanent and the deceiving advertising of non-bank institutions was a significant factor.

Formal debts were cited by a number of my informants as the main reason why it did not make sense for them to seek a job in one of Ostrava’s industrial zones. One day in August, I was chatting to Robert, responsible for a crew of street cleaners employed through the Labour Office. In his early 20s, Robert said that he used to work in a “Korean company” in the industrial zone some years ago. His gross monthly salary of 17,000 CZK (595 GBP) was cut every month by 5,000 to 6,000 CZK (175 to 210 GBP) due to debt claims. So he left the job and started working in street cleaning, being on close to a minimum wage, but incurring lower debt claim payments. [This was due to company’s policy of keeping the debt claims reasonable so that workers do not end up below subsistence level and eventually leave. This policy changed some months after I have left Ostrava].

Hidden fees and rising interest equals excessive debts

Julek had a secondary education and worked for a moderate salary for over a decade. He grew up in an orphanage where he was exposed to the gajo [white] world, especially its cuisine. “I cook gajo food, so many Gypsies like to visit me and taste it.” Shortly after he left the orphanage in the 1990s, he became a victim of fraud. Somebody asked him to put his name under a fast loan application which he did upon an agreement that he will get part of the money. “I may have seen up to 30,000 CZK (1,050 GBP) out the total amount.” His debts have reached about 600,000 CZK (21,016 GBP) because he didn’t pay them back and the interest kept increasing the owed amount. His monthly wage gets cut every month due to repossession payments which render it fairly low. He lives in a dark dilapidated one-bedroom flat in a run-down neighbourhood.

Bible v Bailiffs

Bailiffs visited Nina quite frequently. I asked her how they behaved during those visits.  Like “assholes” (hovada), she said curtly. “They shout and threaten us.”  One of the first things she stated in this conversation was that the bailiffs are white [gádže]. “They find out the dates when we receive benefits and come.” At one occasion, she would not let them in. The violent behaviour of bailiffs was also mentioned also during my conversation with Julek. He  once went with bailiffs to a family in the neighbourhood of …oz. We both knew the family in question – they were Born-again Christians belonging to a group colloquially called ‘Halleluyah’. During the visit of the bailiff accompanied by Julek, the family members presented a Bible and started preaching to them in defence (?). “Good that I went to that visit,” noted Julek, “he [the bailiff] would have been unnecessarily brutal”.

*All given names and names of locations are withdrawn to protect the privacy of people whom I met during my research.

During my time in Ostrava, I was continuously taking notes of the narratives and imaginaries of the neighbourhood of Údol. They included stories of and about people who live there; but also stories of real estate agents whom I approached when looking for a flat; teachers in the local schools; employers or local activists.

On the way to my morning meeting with a prospective employer, I have noticed that people cut their walk to Pěkná Street* through a shortcut between houses. Behind a warehouse-turned-into-a-gym was a big derelict space with old garages. A group of very young men were breaking or cutting pieces of the old walls using pickaxes. A man exiting a three-storey tenement overlooking the rubble whistled in my direction.

Later I became a frequent visitor to that house during my late morning chats over coffee and cigarettes with a Roma couple, Nina and Ivan, who rented a flat on the second floor. The “garage area” remained derelict until the end of 2016 when I left Ostrava.

I asked Nina if I could take picture of it one morning in the summer. “Yes, record it – show how they abandon it like this [for months] and then people say that the Gypsies destroyed it.”

Many residents attempted several times to move to a “better”, less segregated area. What ensued was a variation of the same scenario. The non-Roma residents would object, sometimes immediately during the visit, sometimes afterwards petitioning the council against renting a flat to Roma residents.

“We went to see a flat on Old Street. The moment we entered the hallway, the neighbours were outside. One of them told us that rents were high in the building… By the time we [finished the viewing and] got downstairs, they were all there. Mr …sky from the city council who went to the viewing with us, then returned to the house and discussed something with the residents for 10 minutes.”

Marta tells me about one her attempts to move from “Pěkná area”. She concluded that the best way to find a new place is to look for a location where “they have an experience with Roma. If there is none, it’s a dead end (je to zabitý)… you submit an application, they refuse it and refer you to Sandy Street [considered to be “a Roma area”]. It is better to say upfront during your first phone call that you are a Roma… In the past it [racism?] was rather covert; you were able to defend yourself during communism because there was legislation and there was work for everyone.”

Despite lack of any public leisure facilities, the neighbourhood was lively during the summer months – children playing on the side streets, women and men of various ages sitting on chairs in front of houses enjoying the sun. One of the irregular past-time activities was football tennis.

But these activities were slowly disappearing and the number of the residents was shrinking as the local authority was progressively selling the public housing . “I used to know almost everyone on Pěkná Street, it was very lively. I was leafleting in the area for six years.” We were sitting on the corner of their tenement with Sara and several relatives and neighbours. The children were running around, enjoying the last day before the school was about to start.

* All given names of people as well as names of specific streets are withheld to protect the anonymity of the people whom I met during my research.