In the past few years we have seen the emergence, for the first time on a continental scale, of Roma as a central focus of radical, xenophobic politics. In a number of different European countries (including Hungary and Bulgaria in the former East and Italy in the West) ‘the Roma’ have become a, and in some cases the, primary concern of radical exclusionist politics. In order to understand these developments better, this article places them in a broader historical context. The way in which, over the past six or seven years, Roma and Gypsies have increasingly been treated in an intolerant and hostile fashion, reflects broader and deeply disturbing trends in European politics which have made anxiety, resentment and hostility towards ‘strangers in our midst’ increasingly prominent features of public life. In each case, under various structural and social pressures, we see European actors testing the limits of the ‘social imaginary’ and beginning to flesh out new ways of thinking about the ties that bind and connect citizens in modern Europe.