“NO ROLE models,” says Zvezdelina Atanassova when asked why education is not valued in Lozenets. In this Roma (gypsy) neighbourhood in Stara Zagora, a town of 138,000 in south-eastern Bulgaria, she is a rarity: a Roma, a woman and a student. Girls here rarely study beyond primary school. Boys drop out around 15, as soon as they can get a driving licence. Asked about their aspirations, seven in ten say they want to become pimps, laments Gantcho Iliev, who runs a charity working with Lozenets’ youth. No other occupation comes with a big house, posh car and the attention of attractive women.

Roma make up 5% of Bulgaria’s population, says the census. Yet this is an underestimate, as many distrust officials and refuse to register, or misstate their ethnicity because prejudice equates it with backwardness and petty crime. In six central and eastern European countries the Roma are thought to make up 7-10% of the population (see chart 1). Across Europe, half of Roma lack such amenities as running water. Only 15% have secondary education.

The Roma population is also younger and faster-growing. One in five labour-market entrants in Bulgaria and Romania is a Roma, says the World Bank; one in six in Hungary and Slovakia. Yet their job prospects are little better than their parents’. School dropout rates are high (see chart 2). Custom values a bride’s virginity and traditional household role over education. Many parents, worried about their daughters mingling with boys, pull them out of school and marry them off. In the poorest families children often skip school to work. Schools in Roma neighbourhoods, where 30-60% of them live, are dismal. Segregation is common. Over a quarter of Roma pupils in Bulgarian and Romanian schools, and half in Hungarian ones, are taught in separate classrooms. Segregation in Hungary is rising, partly driven by “white flight”. A third of pupils in Czech schools for the mentally disabled are Roma, a higher share than two years ago. This prompted the European Commission in September to launch a case against the Czech Republic for discrimination. In April it did the same for Slovakia. If these countries do not change, they could face hefty fines. Yet politics stands in the way of reform. Anti-Roma sentiment is increasing in Bulgaria and Hungary, where minority-bashers gained parliamentary seats last year. Hungary’s Jobbik, led by the founder of a black-clad brigade of thugs who terrorised Roma neighbourhoods until banned in 2009, took 21% of the vote. Other parties now court anti-Roma voters. Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, is no stranger to anti-Roma talk. Neither is Hungary’s Viktor Orban; his government’s best-journalist award in 2013 went to a broadcaster who was fined by the media regulator for calling Roma “apes”. Such indulgence gives the nod to discrimination. One 11-country analysis by the UN Development Programme found that in 2011 Roma men with only primary education earned 11% less than non-Roma men; for those with secondary education the gap was 24-39%. Last year Slovakia’s Financial Policy Institute sent a batch of fictitious job applications to employers; 37% of those with Roma names got a response, against 69% of the rest.

Such prospects, says Zeljko Jovanovic of the Open Society Foundations, drive Roma who succeed through education to hide their ethnicity and cut ties with the places where they grew up, depriving these areas of good examples. Migration data are lacking, but Roma are present in most rich EU countries, getting a mixed reception—from having makeshift camps bulldozed in France and Italy to being offered help in Belgium and Germany.

Many are drawn by generous welfare systems. Some seek more lucrative lawbreaking, from pickpocketing to serious crimes. But surveys find that most who migrate do so for work. Around a fifth of Roma households in Bulgaria have a family member working abroad, says Alexey Pamporov of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Many go back and forth for seasonal jobs in construction or agriculture. But not all. “Are they looking for nurses in England?” asks Ms Atanassova, who will soon be one.