Abstract:
The demographic tendencies in Bulgaria in the last two decades determine apart from a demographic crisis in the country and the decrease in population in absolute numbers, also serious changes in the structures of the population. One of the serious changes is related to the change in the ethnic structure of the population which is seen in the decrease of the main Bulgarian ethnos and gradual increase in the Roma population ethnos. According to prognosis data around the year 2050 the Roma ethnos will be about 22-23% from all the population. From this point of view the integration of the Roma people is turned into a priority task for the Bulgarian society in the next few decades. The aim of the present article is to study the genesis of the problem with the difficult integration and marginalization of the Roma Ethnos in Bulgaria, as well as to analyze successful integration models and to see how applicable they are in other parts of the country with Roma population. During the analysis we have found out that when we talk about the difficult integration of the Roma people, we get to their educational level. At present only 0,5% of the Roma people have a high education, and just 9% are with high-school education, which means that over 90% of them are with lower than high school education. That is exactly the big ethnic problem in Bulgaria. The Roma people with their younger age structure can easily be a reserve in the labor market in our country, where an acute deficit of working people is felt. But this can happen only with a sharp increase of their educational level. The happy news is that we already have such positive examples in Bulgaria, such as the integrational educational model based on the Iclandic educational model in the town of Straldja, where only for a year a real increase of the attendance of the Roma students was achieved with 40%. Our main conclusion is that the integration of the Roma people, which determines the future of Bulgaria, goes through several important steps. The first one is Education, and the next ones are degetoisation, mutual studying and understanding of the cultures among the young people from the different ethnoses in the country, breaking the stereotypes and the negative attitudes in the society, stimulation of the labor realization, and improvement of the social and living conditions of the Roma people.