[Reading this in-depth study presupposes knowledge of the content presented in the cultural test relating to this practice].

For the understanding of this practice, the following is an excerpt from the essay 'Is begging a Roma cultural practice? Answers from the Italian legal system and anthropology' by Ilenia Ruggiu (Ruggiu 2016).
Among anthropologists, begging has been defined in the following ways:

• the activity of the last 'hunter-gatherer' society living in the West (Formoso 1986); a form of resistance (Koprow 1991);
•  a key to the Roma foundation myth (Fraser 1993);
• an economic strategy and a means of survival (Okeley 1995; Piasere ed. 2000a; Tesar 2012);
• a false representation of marginality to exploit non-Roma (Asseo 1988);
• a deviant version of Marcel Mauss's gift theory (Piasere 2000c).

 
The many different voices and discourses on begging that emerge within anthropology complexify the 'simplistic' choice made by Italian judges to define begging as culturally related to the Roma. The following descriptive overview of the main positions emerging within anthropology shows why begging should be considered an economic practice connected to other Roma cultural practices, but not part of their culture.
An early anthropological reading of Roma begging defines it as 'a form of gathering' carried out by the last society of 'hunter-gatherers' living in the West. In defining the Roma as 'a population of travellers and gatherers', Bernard Formoso (1986) looks at the Roma through the lens of evolutionary anthropology, as people who remained at the stage of the earliest human societies in which gathering was a pervasive feature of all social and economic life. Formoso specifies that the object of gathering no longer consists of the natural products that the land can offer, but rather of cultural products, such as money and other objects acquired through begging. While Patrick Williams has strongly criticised Formoso's position, in 1995 Leonardo Piasere, editing the volume 'Gypsy Communities, Gypsy Communities', (Piasere ed. 1995a), took up Formoso's definition of begging as an evolutionary form of 'collecting' and re-read it through the lens of economic anthropology (Godelier 1974).
In this work, Piasere sees begging as 'an economic strategy' (Piasere 1995b) adopted by the Roma to negotiate their values and aspirations within Western societies: 'The Roma did not come to the West to sell their labour, either manual or intellectual, nor to invest productive, commercial or financial capital; they did not come to enter the structure of production or circulation of goods in the capitalist economic system. On the contrary, they came to the West not with the intention of earning a living by begging and/or taking: both activities can be considered a form of aggregation or a form of gathering. It is clear that, unlike the hunter-gatherers who are normally studied by anthropologists, for the Roma the natural environment is less important than the social environment' (Piasere 1995c:347). Piasere describes the differences and similarities between 'primitive' and 'contemporary' hunter-gatherers: 'for a gathering operation of any kind, three elements are necessary: a territory in which resources are accessible, people, and tools. These elements are called forces of production, and the territory the Roma preferentially occupy is a large or medium-sized city. [...]
The 'economic role' of begging is also emphasised by Judith Okeley (Okeley 1995:275). Studies conducted in the 1980s and 1990s do not directly address the question of whether begging is cultural or not. On the one hand, they show a rather shared way of life that is rooted in the everyday life of the Roma, but at the same time they all emphasise the economic dimension of begging [...] It is more recent research work on begging that better clarifies the question of whether it is cultural or not. The work I refer to is entitled "The Meanings of Begging in Gypsy Cultures" (Piasere ed. 2000a).
Evocatively, 'meanings' and 'cultures' are in the plural. A first important position that emerges in this work is the diversity of meaning that begging can have within the various Roma groups. Field studies show huge differences in the activity of begging, its perception, its origins and its continuity. For example, in the Romanian Cortorari group, it is practised mainly by men and is a recent activity, which is only accompanied by more traditional activities, such as selling horses (Tesar 2012:11623). In contrast, among the Sinti Estraiχarja living in northern Italy, the activity is reserved for women (Tauber 2000).
Alessandro Simoni is sceptical about the cultural nature of begging and suggests leaving the answer to the individual group. He observes that: "among groups that can be labelled as Roma, the frequency, economic function, cultural dimension and characteristics of child begging are extremely different" (Simoni 2009:100). For this reason, anyone wishing to read begging through the lens of culture should keep "the cultural nature of begging within the specific group and not within a mythical 'Roma culture' that has more to do with stereotypes than with serious anthropological evidence" (Simoni 2009:101). In contrast to these positions, a second group of anthropologists writing in this paper clearly rejects the cultural paradigm in favour of the economic one. ​

Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash

In his contribution, Leonardo Piasere argues that: "to claim that begging is part of 'Roma culture is nonsense" (Piasere 2000c:421). Piasere justifies this loud and clear assertion with the following argument: rather than 'a long-lasting traditional activity supported by internal patterns', begging is 'a response to an externally imposed process of pauperisation that has worsened over the centuries' (Piasere 2000c:418). The anthropologist comes to this conclusion after an in-depth analysis of begging since 1417, and his critique of the cultural reading is particularly useful because it shows that the supposed 'millenary tradition' cited by the Supreme Court in 2008 and 2012 must be deconstructed: the fact that begging is an ancient habit does not mean that it belongs to Roma culture. In fact, one of the main misunderstandings that lead to considering begging as a traditional habit is the fact that it seems to have a strong historical dimension. In fact, begging accompanied the entry of the Roma into Europe, and seems to be embedded in their founding myth (Fraser 1993).
​The earliest written European sources on the emergence of the Roma in Europe, dated 1417, mention the mendicancy practised by gypsies [...] who travelled in Europe to complete a pilgrimage to atone for the religious sin of apostasy. These false pilgrims asked for and received public offerings from public institutions. This early use of begging was referred to by Fraser Angus as the 'Great Trick'. In reality, it was a planned operation to make money at the expense of the gadgè (Fraser 1993: 60-84). Despite these ancient roots, it is precisely - and paradoxically - the history of begging itself that proves that it is something external to Gypsy culture. In fact, what the Roma practised then was typical behaviour of the Christian pilgrims of the time. They were incorporating, for their own needs, a practice that was 'foreign' to them: 'they used the form of mobility in the territory (pilgrimage) accepted at that time' (Piasere 2000c:410), they asked for (and received) public offerings that helped them in their (pretended) pilgrimage.
It is also important to note that the Roma did not only rely on begging: 'begging was never isolated, but was always accompanied by divination, selling horses, setting up circuses in the squares and stealing' (Piasere 2000c:410). The situation changed within a few generations: those who were pilgrims receiving public offerings from the villages became suspect and institutions started paying them to leave. By 1499, public offerings no longer existed: the gypsies 'begged from door to door', asking for private assistance (Piasere 2000c:412). The process of persecution and marginalisation had begun.
This does not mean that the Roma completely lost their ability to beg: in fact, they began to rationalise it. By begging, they professed marginality as a means of survival (Asseo 1988) and, by keeping it out of their cultural values, they developed an 'adaptive capacity' to erase the shame otherwise implicit in begging (Piasere 2000c:421).
In this context, Piasere's attempt to read begging into Marcel Mauss's gift theory is convincing. This well-known theory is based on the idea that all societies are founded on the 'gift' that serves to strengthen human relations.
The pattern of the gift theory is a 'give-receive-exchange' triangle. In begging, this scheme is reversed and becomes 'ask-receive-exchange (uncertain)', with these two main differences: the request breaks with the gratuitousness of the gift (I give because someone asks, so there is no longer spontaneity), and the exchange is not certain, but postponed to some future benefit that serves to strengthen human relations, to some future benefit that will come from God or from the good conscience of the donors. In this regard, Piasere quotes a Roma interviewee who states that by asking for alms "I allow good Christians to go to heaven" (Piasere 2000c:423).
With these nuances, begging remains an economic activity, and Leonardo Piasere's position in this regard has not changed, and he recently defined child begging as an 'economic strategy' (Piasere 2013:2). (Ruggiu, 2016, pp. 41-44)