LAUSR

Abstract Using the lens of informal Roma settlements in the southwestern periphery of Rome, this article explores Romani approaches to urban space, showing how these are informed by heterogeneous understandings of non-Roma conceptions and practices of (in)formality, (il)legality and (il)licitness. The article also highlights complex and ambivalent attitudes concerning Roma and their informal settlements on the part of non-Roma residents of the neighboring district. Finally, it frames the existence of the informal settlements within the authorities' juggling of formal rejection and informal calculated acceptance of urban informality. The grey spaces that emerge from the convergence of institutional pragmatics of compromise and compassion are connected to governmental discourses that frame informal Roma settlements as dangerous and polluting spaces, and treat their inhabitants as exploitable labor force and politically expendable subjects. Urban (in)formality is also the space that Roma, like many non-Roma, navigate to cope with vulnerability and express their right to the city. Informal Roma settlements thus appear fully embedded in the political, socio-economic and cultural fabric of Rome, which embraces them precisely by treating them as separate polluting spaces.