Trapped and forgotten in the past: the voices of the exiled, the left-behind, the dispossessed and the abandoned." This project seeks to document people who find themselves in what the author calls the “land of no return” — the country of their birth, but without permission to live there. Nearly 2,000 years ago, the Roman Empire tore into what was then known as the western world in what’s known as the “Fall of Rome,” setting off nearly two centuries of barbarian invasions that would ultimately create today’s boundaries of Italy. And today, Italy is trying to build a common future with Europe, despite the ghosts that haunt the past. "Forced away from land that is theirs — which is theirs by right," says Corinne Schmitt-Nielsen, a researcher with a background in geography, history and anthropology who helped found the project. "They are living on the margins of society and of nation-states." That's why Schmitt-Nielsen created Roma Lives. While Italy and other countries have moved to address the needs of the Roma people, a Roma rights activist from eastern Europe told the group that they are left to fend for themselves — even though the rights they're guaranteed under international law. Related: Italian politician wants to make Roma-only camps illegal "If you ask me if we have a real Roma integration policy in Italy, I would answer no," said Iris Orbán, who chairs the Roma Rights Coordinator Network in Europe. "At the same time, I am hearing from people who live in camps that they are being harassed and beaten up. [Roma] people are being beaten, threatened, they're going back and forth in Italy." But the Roma rights activists say many people don't give these immigrants a chance to change. "They expect people to be like them and to have the same qualities and the same skills, but they're not," Orbán said. "I'm not saying that they should learn English or that they should work. But they should have the chance to do it." Related: Italy's Roma 'must be left to die' says minister On a chilly February day in Piazza del Popolo, not far from where Schmitt-Nielsen works, Roma Lives volunteers handed out flyers to tourists as curious pedestrians walked by. The group had been speaking with a group of tourists from Japan — in one of the only situations in which the Roma are more welcome than in Italy, since some Japanese companies have invested in their neighborhoods. The Roma people there are a minority of migrants in the area, but not all of them stay in Rome. "They went back to Brest, to Romania. But Romania no longer exists anymore, it's just Romania," one man named Vladimira said. "Do you know what we need here? We need legal work. We want it all to be legal, we don't want it illegal," he told the volunteers in Italian, while another man translated into English. "We want to do a normal life here," Vladimira said. On that day, the volunteer with Roma Lives, Francesca Tomasi, joined their call for justice, which isn't easy to quantify or achieve. Related: Italy's 'deportation machines' are not what you think they are "The way I see it is that there is nothing specific here that would require a special legal framework, but the problem of inclusion is a complex matter in itself," Tomasi said. "The issue is one of recognition." She wants to see the Roma being treated as individuals instead of being considered numbers. She said Roma Lives should encourage the international community to accept them as a human rights issue, which often doesn't get the same attention as women's or LGBT rights, as opposed to an issue like drug trafficking. "Roma is an idea, a concept, not an identity," Tomasi said. She hopes to have the campaign in 12 cities by the end of the year. And she says they want to have Roma Lives in countries like the U.S., the UK, Australia and Germany to share their message, starting in the spring. She's also started an online petition, where she hopes to get more than 50,000 signatures. With assistance from Alice Meredith and Paola Totaro. Raffaele Lorusso, the president of Associazione Culturale Progetto Fos dei Roma (ACPF), told CNN the petition doesn't just represent the view of Roma lives, but also those of many other Italians and Europeans who refuse to be divided. "If we want to make Italy safer," Lorusso said, "it would be nice to see a government that thinks in terms of inclusion, instead of just fear and fear of other people."