Perception of East Europeans in United States and Western Europe (crime, life)
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I just stumbled about a study made by an American anthropologist who analyzes the difference between reality and how some East Europeans: Romanians and Hungarians, are perceived in US, as they're depicted in media and popular culture.
I knew that there are strong stereotypic deformations, but after reading this study I found the level of this unrealistic image is even higher.
Are you saying Romania isn't full of gypsies and vampires, and Hungarians don't ride horses around half the day shooting arrows from their bows?
Probably you want to know only the first part, if is full of of Roma people. There are a lot of them, perhaps around 1 million ( 619,007 at last census, from 22 million total population of Romania).
But that doesn't mean that Romania looks apocaliptic when visiting or living here. In fact, it looks almost as good as some Western countries (like Northern Italy for example) in respect of cleanliness, state of buildings and roads etc. And those Roma settlements and neighborhoods, beside being not many and not in the circulated areas, aren't bad, you'll have a much worse impression visiting gettoes in western Europe.
Roma live self-segregated of Romanians (or Hungarians) and usually, Romanian cities and villages are clean and well maintaned like any other European cities and villages. Also there are many decent Roma settlements, where the people work and is honest (especially because of religion), not all of them are bad.
So generally, Romania is a safer and more pleasantful country than most of Western Europe, because it has no immigrants and the nature is healthier and more enjoyable.
people here no longer see Eastern Europeans as one monolithic block. For example, Polish people are generally seen as hard-working, decent people and there's also no bias against Czechs, Hungarians, Slovenians, Croatians,...
To be honest, there is a bit of a negative bias against Bulgarians and Romanians, because they seem to move en masse to our cities. But then on the other hand, lots of those people moving are Roma-gypsies. And against them, I won't deny it, there's lots of distrust and even racism, as they're seen as people begging, stealing and generally unwilling to work...
I should have put the title "Perception of EE countries", because this was what I think is interesting. Romanians and Roma) are better known in W.E. as immigrants, but what I think is unrealistic is the way some countries, especially Romania, are thought to be.
Many, maybe most Westerners who visit Romania for the first time are surprised by its level of development, quality of infrastructure and so on.
Looking at Romania on street view for a half an hour, I can quite clearly tell its East European.
The misconception most people have about East Europe is that it's all dirty, run-down, etc.
No, that's the "ghetto" of those countrie or cities.
What separates the two is having a lot of ghetto and the severity of the ghetto. Sure, a few East European countries may look like West Europe, such as Czech Republic, Estonia, Slovenia and Hungary, but Romania is not in that category. Sorry.
#67 - That is very low, and even lower on European standards. Compared with what I listed? Slovenia - 30. Czech - 38. Estonia - 42. Hungary. - 47
Looking even more into infrastructure, most of it was designed in the 30's and built in the 40's and hasn't been touched since, such as the metro.
I'd much rather live in Russia, at least they build new things there and you have a chance at a good life, even with the worst politics in any developed country.
Looking at Romania on street view for a half an hour, I can quite clearly tell its East European.
Looking even more into infrastructure, most of it was designed in the 30's and built in the 40's and hasn't been touched since, such as the metro.
I'd much rather live in Russia, at least they build new things there and you have a chance at a good life, even with the worst politics in any developed country.
I think is illustrative the fact that you base your opinion on Google Street View, which beside being old and outdated (much of infrastructure was modernized since 2008 or so, when the GSV pictures were taken), can't give a good idea.
The infrastructure was built mostly in communist period and the main roads were rebuilt / modernized in recent years. The old, broken roads can be seen now in periferic villages, although many such villages have modernized roads as well.
Some videos with roads that are not exceptions but the usual in most zones (there are some zones were the roads are still bad):
Mestecăniș Pass - Bukovina (north-east Romania)
Sibiu belt way (center of Romania)
A2 "Sun" Motorway (between Bucharest and seaside) - here, crossing Danube at Cernavodă
Vidin- Calafat Bridge over Danube between Romania and Bulgaria (south-west Romania)
Last edited by CARPATHIAN; 03-14-2013 at 06:41 AM..
I think is illustrative the fact that you base your opinion on Google Street View, which beside being old and outdated (much of infrastructure was modernized since 2008 or so, when the GSV pictures were taken), can't give a good idea.
The infrastructure was built mostly in communist period and the main roads were rebuilt / modernized in recent years. The old, broken roads can be seen now in periferic villages, although many such villages have modernized roads as well.
Some videos with roads that are not exceptions but the usual in most zones (there are some zones were the roads are still bad):
Mestecăniș Pass - Bukovina (north-east Romania)
Sibiu belt way (center of Romania)
A2 "Sun" Motorway (between Bucharest and seaside) - here, crossing Danube at Cernavodă
Vidin- Calafat Bridge over Danube between Romania and Bulgaria (south-west Romania)
The images taken were from Summer 2012 in GSV.
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