Concept
The Romani people have several distinct populations, the largest being the Roma and the Calé, who reached Anatolia and the Balkans in the early 12th century, from a migration out of the Indian subcontinent beginning about 1st century – 2nd century AD. They settled in the areas of present-day Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Romania, Croatia, Moldova, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Hungary, Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Slovakia, by order of volume, and Spain. From the Balkans, they migrated throughout Europe and, in the nineteenth and later centuries, to the Americas. The Roma population in the United States is estimated at more than one million. There is no official or reliable count of the Romani populations worldwide. Many Romani refuse to register their ethnic identity in official censuses for fear of discrimination. Others are descendants of intermarriage with local populations and no longer identify only as Roma, or not at all. As of the early 2000s, an estimated 4 to 9 million Romani people lived in Europe and Asia Minor, although some Romani organizations estimate numbers as high as 14 million. Significant Romani populations are found in the Balkan peninsula, in some Central European states, in Spain, France, Russia, and Ukraine. The total number of Romani living outside Europe are primarily in the Middle East and North Africa and in the Americas, and are estimated in total at more than two million. Some countries do not collect data by ethnicity. The Romani people identify as distinct ethnicities based in part on territorial, religious, cultural and dialectal differences, and self-designation. The main branches are: Roma, concentrated in Central and Eastern Europe and Italy; they emigrated (mostly from the 19th century onwards) to the rest of Europe as well as the Americas. Calé, mostly in Spain (see Gitanos), but also in Portugal (see Romani people in Portugal), Southern France, and Latin America Finnish Kale, in Finland; communities also exist in Sweden.
