Obstacles to attending school have not been resolved for the vast majority of Romani children in Kosovo in 2001, as examples from Polansky’s field reports in the analysis section show below. Furthermore, lack of access to education has and will continue to greatly diminish their opportunities to obtain language/job skills.

In sum, the despair with which Roma view their future in Kosovo is informed by age old persecution which not only persists, but has been exacerbated in the aftermath of war.

While the degree to which Roma in Kosovo literally are or perceive themselves to be under threat of physical attack on a day-to-day basis has improved slightly in the past year, the sad fact is that the Roma, in contrast with the Albanians, still receive a disproportionately meager amount of aid from the international humanitarian community.

Exile is sharply compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its firm home: Its essential sadness can never be surmounted. — Edward Said

As is true in varying degrees for all displaced and refugee populations from close-knit societies, the breakdown of the Romani personal infrastructure as a consequence of war and flight has irreparably traumatized the Roma of Kosovo. Infrastructure in this sense means more than physical objects such as roads, bridges, and homes. Personal infrastructure refers to an individual’s connection to others as a piece in a complex and highly interrelated social fabric.

The basic foundation of Romani resiliency in the face of centuries of oppression is their social structure, tightly knit along both kin and occupational lines. This protective social fabric has been achieved largely by upholding strict taboos against marriage with Gadje (non-Roma), and very cautious interaction with people of other cultures and ethnic groups. In the Romani world, social activities and celebrations such as weddings, births, circumcisions, cultural events like Herdeljez, funerals and mourning, etc., require the presence of not just immediate relatives, but of whole communities. Romani communities, simultaneously fixed and fluid geographically, are the very center of these activities which in the aggregate represent the emotional, spiritual, physical and intellectual foundations of Romani life.

Prior to the escalation of the Serbian-Albanian conflict in Kosovo and the NATO intervention in 1999, most Romani families, many of them quite large, had members living and working in Western Europe. These were often the main breadwinners for their families, sending money back home on a regular basis, and returning frequently to Kosovo to celebrate important cultural events and family milestones. But in the turmoil following the major ethnic cleansing of the Roma from Kosovo in the summer of 1999, most Romani families have been torn apart with little opportunity for reunification on any soil anywhere in Europe. Very few refugee families have been able to begin to create communities in other countries, as they are denied any form of legal, permanent status. Thousands of Kosovo Roma are living in abominable ghettoes in Italy.¹¹ Many more are living as "displaced persons" in Macedonian camps. These Roma find themselves frighteningly close to the on-again-off-again escalating violence between Macedonia's ethnic Albanian population and the Macedonian army, a repeat of the nightmare that forced them to flee Kosovo.

The psychological effect of the tearing apart of Romani families may be difficult for Westerners to fathom. In Western societies, it is not considered unusual for members of a family to live far apart from one another. For Roma however, it is their worst nightmare to be separated from family or prevented from travelling to see one another for any length of time. In the diaspora resulting from the conflict in Kosovo, the generally dark-skinned Roma are easily recognizable and are thus singled out as a reviled "other" and often prevented from traveling across borders. Further, the vast majority of Roma who have fled Kosovo lack the legal documents required for traveling in a world delineated by political borderlines. Hence many Roma seeking to reconnect with families and communities are unable to do so. It is important to note that the widespread dispersion of Romani refugee families and communities throughout Europe has also limited access to prospective Romani mates, potentially threatening the future of the Roma as a distinct human and cultural entity. In the absence of close-knit family and community life which has been the backbone of Romani survival, Roma are now severed from one another. Some who want to leave Kosovo and reunify with family in other nations are prevented from entering those countries. Others who are living abroad want to return home to visit or to stay, but choose not to for fear of persecution and threat to life and limb in Kosovo. The Roma are in a terrible Catch-22 situation: they can neither stay nor go.