Recognized but unrepaired: forced sterilization, compensation, and the limits of post-eugenic justice

This article examines the persistent failure to provide adequate compensation for the forced and coerced sterilization of Romani women in Central and Eastern Europe as a structural, rather than procedural injustice. Drawing on scholarship that conceptualizes eugenics as a scientific movement, racialized, classed and gendered technology of power, this study situates contemporary non-compensation within the afterlife of eugenics under neoliberal governance. Despite formal recognition of sterilization as a human rights violation, limited redress reflects enduring selective reproductive logics that devalue Romani lives and reproduction. This article argues that neoliberal eugenics operates through regimes of desiredness and deservingness that position Romani women as undesired and undeserving subjects of both reproduction and reparation. These dynamics are examined through Czechia’s compensation mechanism and Slovakia’s continued deferral of systemic material redress.