Cover not available

In:Representing the Other in European Media Discourses
Edited by Jan Chovanec and Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 74] 2017
► pp. 259–280

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Chapter 11
The Roma as ultimate European minority and ultimate outsider?

The framing of the Roma in newspapers following a human-rights violation

Published online: 23 November 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.74.12del
Abstract
In order to understand the paradoxical position of the Roma as the subject of both European inclusion programmes and persistent exclusionary practices, this chapter focuses on the interaction of both inclusionary and exclusionary frames used in discussions in the Flemish newspaper media following a human-rights violation. The case concerns the Belgian government’s expulsion of Slovak Roma migrants in 1999 (the Čonka case). Proceeding from the sociology of human rights and the principles of critical discourse analysis (CDA), we analyse 212 newspaper articles from the period 1999–2002. Based on this analysis, we identify the following connections between the inclusionary and exclusionary conceptualizations of Roma migrants: (1) an emphasis on the excluded character of the Roma, (2) the possibility that they are “deserving” of expulsion and (3) the dominance of the nation-state model within the context of migration. These results illustrate the complexity with which inclusionary and exclusionary discourses can be intertwined, thereby contributing to sociological research concerning human-rights practices and advancing CDA research on “discursive othering” beyond a sole focus on exclusionary discourses.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical framework
    • 2.1The discursive practice of human rights and the dynamics of inclusion/exclusion
    • 2.2Critical discourse analysis and “discursive othering”
    • 2.3Dynamics of inclusion/exclusion for the Roma
  • 3.Case, data and methods
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1The Roma as disempowered victims
    • 4.2Some Roma as good and not deserving expulsion
    • 4.3Roma as unlawful refugees deserving expulsion
    • 4.4Roma as “unadaptables” deserving expulsion
    • 4.5Roma as the overlexicalized “other”
    • 4.6Interactions
  • 5.Conclusion and discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (47)
References
Bancroft, Angus (2005). Roma and Gypsy-travellers in Europe: Modernity, Race, Space and Exclusion. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Benhabib, Seyla (2005). Borders, boundaries, and citizenship. Ps-Political Science and Politics 38 (4), 673–677. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bogdal, Klaus-Michael (2012). Europe invents the Gypsies: The dark side of modernity. Eurozine, 24 February 2012.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burrell, Jennifer (2010). In and out of rights: Security, migration, and human rights talk in postwar Guatemala. Journal of Latin American and Carribean Anthropology 15 (1), 90–115. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cahn, Claude and Peter Vermeersch (2000). The group expulsion of Slovak Roma by the Belgian government: A case study of the treatment of Romani refugees in Western countries. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 13 (2), 71–82. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carvalho, Anabele (2008). Media(ted) discourse and society. Journalism Studies 9 (2), 161–177. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chovanec, Jan (2013). How come you’re not a criminal? Immigrant stereotyping and ethnic profiling in the press. In: Martínez Lirola, María (Ed.) Discourses on Immigration in Times of Economic Crisis: A Critical Perspective. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 194–215.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Christianakis, Mary (2015). Victimization and vilification of Romani children in media and human rights organizations discourses. Social Inclusion 3 (5), 48–63. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Donnelly, Jack (2003). Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice (2nd ed.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
European Court of Human Rights (3rd sect.) (5 February 2002). Čonka v. Belgium. Appl. No. 51564/99 (final since 5 May 2002).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman (1993). Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1995). Media Discourse. London: Arnold.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fassin, Didier (2005). Compassion and repression: the moral economy of immigration policies in France. Cultural Anthropology 20 (3), 362–387. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fowler, Roger (1991). Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hemelsoet, Elias (2013). The Roma people: problem or mirror for Western European societies? An exploration of educational possibilities. In: Miskovic, Maja (Ed.) Roma Education in Europe: Practices, Policies and Politics. Philadelphia: Routledge, pp. 59–70.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ignatoiu-Sora, Emanuele (2011). The discrimination discourse in relation to the Roma: its limits and benefits. Ethnic and Racial Studies 34 (10), 1697–1714. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jiwani, Yasmin, and Richardson, John E. (2010). Discourse, ethnicity and racism. In Teun van Dijk (Ed.). Discourse Studies (2nd ed.). London: Sage, pp. 241–262.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Joye, Stijn (2010). News discourses on distant suffering: a Critical discourse analysis of the 2003 SARS outbreak. Discourse and Society 21 (5), 586–601. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kapur, Ratna (2002). The tragedy of victimization rhetoric: Resurrecting the “native” subject in international /post-colonial feminist legal politics. Harvard Human Rights Journal 15 (1), 1–38.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Laclau, Ernesto and Chantal Mouffe (1985). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London: Verso.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Madsen, Mikael Rask (2011). Reflexivity and the construction of the international object: The Case of Human Rights. International Political Sociology 5 (3), 259–275. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McGarry, Aidan (2011). The Roma voice in the European Union: Between national belonging and transnational identity. Social Movement Studies, Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest 10 (3), 283–297. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Morris, Lydia D. (2009). An emergent cosmopolitan paradigm. Asylum, welfare and human rights. The British Journal of Sociology 60 (2), 215–235. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(Ed.) (2006). Rights: Sociological Perspectives. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nash, Kate (2009a). Between Citizenship and Human Rights. Sociology-the Journal of the British Sociological Association 43 (6), 1067–1083.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2009b). The Cultural Politics of Human Rights: Comparing the US and UK. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2010). Media and the Cultural Politics of Human Rights. SciencesPo, CERI/CNRS.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nyers, Peter (2003). Abject Cosmopolitanism: the politics of protection in the anti-deportation movement. Third World Quarterly 24 (6), 1069–1093. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pogány, Istvan (2012). Pariah peoples: Roma and the multiple failures of law in Central and Eastern Europe. Social and Legal Studies 21 (3), 375–393. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rajaram, Prem Kumar and Carl Grundy-Warr (2004). The irregular migrant as Homo Sacer: Migration and detention in Australia, Malaysia, and Thailand. International Migration 42 (1), 33–64. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rein, Martin and Donald A. Schön (1993). Reframing policy discourse. In: Fischer, Frank and John Forester (Eds.) The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 145–166. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sigona, Nando and Peter Vermeersch (2012). Editors’ introduction. The Roma in the New EU: Policies, frames and everyday experiences. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 38 (8), 1189–1193. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Simmel, Georg (1969). The sociological significance of the “stranger”. In: Park, Robert E. and Ernest W. Burgess (Eds.) Introduction to the Science of Sociology (2nd edition). New York: Greenwood Press, pp. 322–327.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tremlett, Annabel (2009). Comparing European institutional and Hungarian approaches to Roma (Gypsy) minorities. In: Agarin, Timofey and Malte Brosig (Eds.) Minority Integration: Debating Ethnic Diversity in Eastern Europe. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp.129–150.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Turner, Bryan. S. (1993). Outline of a theory of human rights. Sociology-the Journal of the British Sociological Association 27 (3), 489–512.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2007). The enclave society: Towards a sociology of immobility. European Journal of Social Theory 10 (2), 287–303. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (2010). Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. Available at: [URL] (accessed 15 November 2014).
van Baar, Huub (2008). The way out of amnesia? Europeanisation and the recognition of the Roma’s past and present. Third Text 22 (3), 373–385. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Dijk, Teun A. (1993). Principles of critical discourse analysis. Discourse and Society 4 (2), 249–283. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2009). News, discourse and ideology. In: Wahl-Jorgensen, Karin and Thomas Hanitzsch (Eds.) The Handbook of Journalism Studies. New York: Routledge, pp. 191–204.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Leeuwen, Theo (2008). Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vermeersch, Peter (2000). Centraal- en Oost-Europese Roma: ongewenste asielzoekers. Streven, June.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Waters, Malcolm (1996). Human rights and the universalisation of interests: Towards a social constructionist approach. Sociology-the Journal of the British Sociological Association 30 (3), 593–600.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth and Martin Reisigl (2001). Discourse and racism. In: Schriffin, Deborah, Deborah Tannen and Heidi E. Hamilton (Eds.) The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 372–397.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth and Michael Meyer (2001). Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Woodiwiss, Anthony (2005). Human Rights. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yanow, Dvora and Marleen Van der Haar (2013). People out of place: Allochthony and autochthony in Netherlands identity discourse- metaphors and categories in action. Journal for International Relations and Development 16 (2), 227–261. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Silva, Cláudia & Paula Carvalho
2023. When Can Compliments and Humour Be Considered Hate Speech? A Perspective From Target Groups in Portugal. Comunicação e Sociedade 43 ► pp. e023006 ff. DOI logo
Chovanec, Jan
2019. Multimodal storytelling in the news: Sequenced images as ideological scripts of othering. Discourse, Context & Media 28 ► pp. 8 ff. DOI logo
Chovanec, Jan
2021. ‘Re-educating the Roma? You must be joking. . .’: Racism and prejudice in online discussion forums. Discourse & Society 32:2 ► pp. 156 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 8 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue