Chapter 11
The Roma as ultimate European minority and ultimate outsider?
The framing of the Roma in newspapers following a human-rights violation
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
-
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