Unheard Voices: Representation of Roma in Swedish and German Media Discourse

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Acknowledgements

This thesis would not exist in its current form, nor its writer in really any semblance of sanity, without these people. With all the gravitas appropriate for an MA Thesis Acknowledgements page, I must give a huge number of thank you’s:

To Mada, Emi and Catherine, the Delanty Fan Club, my co-‐conspirators, critics and collaborators over the last two years. I’m so proud of us, you guys!

To Marta, for keeping me sane and human and well-‐coffee’d when I needed it most. My answer will always be Yes.

To David, for letting me follow him to Uppsala without too much complaint, and for extending both his patience and prowess to the fine-‐tuning of this tome.

To Matthew, whose invaluable guidance and support helped me stay on track.

To Lars, who knows I’m incapable of staying on track but guided and supported me anyway.

To Betül (and Dave!), who spent nights at Göttingen’s Juridicum gathering data for me when I had run out of options.

To Siân, my relentless cheer squad and attentive proofreader.

To Zora, Sonja, and everyone at ECMI who helped me so much in the beginning of this project.

To Fred Taikon, who gave me pastries, tea and several hours of his valuable time to teach me more than I could learn in several months.

To the journalists at Radio Romano, for pushing me to think harder and more critically.

To Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, whose speech was the first spark of inspiration, and whose novel kept me company in my weeks of hermit-‐like writing.

And to my mother, whose faith in my ability never wavers, and who has taught me the most valuable lessons in understanding the stories of others.

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1 Introduction

Whilst no community retains an uncontested image of itself and its identity, Roma communities have little or no control over how they are represented in the public sphere. Usually, representations of Roma originate and are sustained by non-‐

Romani actors...¹

1.1 A Traumatic Past, a Troubling Present

The Roma, or Romani, are the EU’s largest transnational minority.² As a group, Roma are subject to widespread vilification and stereotyping in media

throughout Europe, particularly those living in or originating from Central and Eastern European countries. However as the EU expands and borders have opened, the high levels of migration from east to west have made this issue increasingly important in the older EU member states.³

Germany and Sweden both present interesting cases in the study of Roma communities and populations. Both countries have a long history of ‘native’

Roma minorities. Both countries have recently experienced an increase in

migrant and refugee populations as a result of the conflicts in the Balkan regions in the 1990s, and are currently dealing with the effects of the accession and expansion of the EU in the mid to late 2000s. The history of the Roma in Germany is underscored by particularly grievous trauma during National

Socialism. That legacy, which is underrepresented in comparison to other groups who suffered persecution during those years, is crucial to the nation’s

relationship with its minority population today. This can be juxtaposed with Sweden, a country often lauded as a leader in human rights both within the EU and internationally, which has recently gone through a deeply troubling

controversy regarding a police register of Roma and Travellers in the southern district of Skåne, in direct contravention of rules outlawing the processing of personal information by ethnicity. This juxtaposition between the two countries

1 Aidan McGarry, “Roma as a Political Identity: Exploring Representations of Roma in Europe,” Ethnicities 14, no. 6 (2014): 756, doi:10.1177/1468796814542182.

2 Heide Castañeda, “European Mobilities or Poverty Migration? Discourses on Roma in Germany,” International Migration (2014): 3, doi:10.1111/imig.12166.

3 Ibid. p. 3

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must of course acknowledge the vast disparity in the severity and scale of the stated instances of each country’s mistreatment of the Roma – by no means do I wish to insinuate that an ethnic register is comparable to the wholesale

execution of hundreds of thousands of people – however the comparison of historical legacy with present turmoil is a valuable and fascinating insight.

By examining the media of these two countries, I aim to investigate

prevalent depictions of the Roma in Western Europe. Both Germany and Sweden are styled as leaders in the protection of minorities and conscientious policies, and thus may provide insight not only on the problems associated with the representation of Roma in the media, but also best practices which could be of use to the wider debates and discourses on the Roma. Melanie Ram highlights the importance of media discourse in the integration of Roma populations in social and economic state structures, and asserts that state policies of inclusion cannot be effective if they exist in an environment that is exclusionary – and the media has a significant impact on public opinion of groups such as the Roma.⁴

1.2 Research Question

My question, then, is this: When mainstream newspapers in Germany and Sweden discuss or portray Roma people or issues, how are Roma given a voice within that discourse?

I hypothesise that there is an underrepresentation and a lack of diversity in Roma voices in mainstream media discourse even in countries that are

regarded as having better than average human rights records and treatment of the Roma. I will investigate the rate of representation within a sample of articles from six newspapers. I will then problematise and discuss this in relation to various theories on representation, media, and minorities, and supplement my findings with an interview conducted with Fred Taikon, the editor of Swedish magazine É Romani Glinda and a prominent member of the Swedish Roma community.

4 Melanie H Ram, “Europeanization and the Roma: Spreading the Norms of Inclusion and Exclusion,” paper presented at the 10th Biennial Conference of the European

Community Studies Association -‐ Canada (Montreal, 8^th-‐10^th May, 2014).

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In this thesis, I examine the prevalence of Roma voices within the

dominant media discourses of Sweden and Germany over a two-‐year period, and the variety of the voices represented. In discussing my findings, I aim to

contribute to a more complex understanding of the importance of representation and voice, and the effects that under-‐ or mis-‐representation may have on

minority groups. Moreover, I explore the importance of Sweden and Germany’s roles as leaders and examples in a European context. Although my research focuses on these two countries specifically, it is also vital to understand the Roma as a transnational minority within Europe, and therefore I aim to provide this broader European context.

I analyse the results of this research through a number of theories that pertain specifically to the exclusion of minority groups. I draw on the ideas of the

‘Other’ in European identity-‐building as presented by theorists such as Edward W. Said and Gerard Delanty, media representation and race as discussed by Stuart Hall and Simon Cottle, and the importance of access to and participation in discourse about oneself as explained by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.⁵

In considering my approach to this topic, I have chosen not to conduct an in-‐depth linguistic discourse analysis on the articles themselves, as my language skills in both German and Swedish are insufficient to adequately analyse the subtleties of various linguistic techniques. I also decided not to investigate the policies or laws in place in each country regarding the representation of the Roma, or particular journalistic guidelines or practices specified by the media outlets themselves. Although I believe both methods would provide valuable insight into the production of news media related to the Roma, the lack of data on the actual proportion of representation and voice in the news media

compelled me to dedicate the scope of this thesis to gathering that data, and to leave the more explanatory methodologies to further research in the field. This

5 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “‘The Danger of a Single Story’ -‐ Talk Subtitles and Transcript,” TED.com, 2009,

http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story/transcri pt?language=en.

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paper is therefore exploratory and provides a solid foundation for further explanatory studies.

1.3 Outline of Thesis Structure

This thesis begins with the presentation and explanation of the hypothesis in the introductory chapter, and an overview of selected existing studies in the field of Roma representation in the media.

Chapter 2 provides historical and contemporary context for the study. It begins with a literature review on texts about the history and present situation of the Roma in Europe, Sweden, and Germany. This is followed by a brief

introduction to the complexities surrounding the term ‘Roma’, and explains the idea of ‘Roma’ as a political identity. A short history of the Roma in Europe, Sweden, and Germany follows. The second literature review in Chapter 2 focuses on texts that highlight the importance of the media to representation and social participation of minorities, and ends with a discussion on this topic. The chapter concludes with profiles of the six newspapers included in the study.

Chapter 3 presents the methodology and fieldwork for this thesis. The methodology is primarily composed of three rounds of quantitative coding to generate a sample of articles for data analysis. The data is presented by country, by individual newspaper, and by political leaning.

Chapter 4 develops a theoretical framework with which to discuss and analyse the results of the research. It begins with a literature review of several major theorists in the fields of Orientalism, European studies, and media studies, and draws all these theories together in a frame developed from a speech by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The discussion examines the context in which the discursive marginalisation of the Roma in Europe arises, and explores the consequences of under-‐ and mis-‐representation in the media.

Finally, the conclusion draws together the ideas presented in the analysis, and proposes best practices for the improvement of Roma representation in mainstream media. The presentation of several avenues for further study brings the thesis to a close.

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1.4 Selected Existing Studies

This field of research is still relatively sparse, although some media analysis has been carried out in various European countries including Finland, Germany, the UK and Serbia. The studies discussed in this section give a select overview of research published in the last ten years and reflect a growing academic interest in the presence of stories about Roma in mainstream media, coupled with the increase in the number of stories in Western newspapers due to rising

immigration. The rapidly changing political and social landscape means that research from the last ten years is most relevant to the situation today. There is quite a lot of variation in the approach, methodology, and scope of the studies, which indicates a lack of consistency or sense of unified methodology in this field of research. However the studies in this review share a common focus on

enduring and multi-‐layered racism and the role of the media in perpetuating harmful narratives.

Camilla Nordberg at the University of Helsinki carried out a study with similar aims and methods to my own in 2006, examining the claims around the ideas of citizenship with relation to Finnish Roma in Finnish press media.⁶ She uses a data set of newspaper articles between 1990 and 2003 – a total of 263 articles taken from one Finnish-‐language and one Swedish-‐language newspaper, Helsingin Sangomat and Hufvudstadsbladet, respectively. Unlike in my study, Nordberg conducts extensive qualitative analysis of the particular discursive themes associated with Roma-‐focused articles. However she also looks at the variety and prevalence of Romani actors and participants in articles. She notes a shift in the percentage of Romani voices and actors from 39.1% in 1990, to as high as 42.6% and as low as 26.2% over the thirteen-‐year span of her studies.

Significantly, Nordberg also criticises the lack of diversity both in the topics covered in relation to the Roma and in the actual voices represented as Romani.

She discusses the adverse societal implications of under-‐ and misrepresenting minority groups within media discourse, and elaborates on the power of the media as a discursive arena to determine common history.

6 Camilla Nordberg, “Beyond Representation: Newspapers and Citizenship Participation in the Case of a Minority Ethnic Group,” Nordicom Review 27, no. 2 (2006): 87–104, doi:10.1080/09528822.2012.679041.

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Heide Castañeda, researcher at the University of South Florida in Tampa, USA, uses media analysis and ethnographic research to examine “discursive framing of displacement and legitimacy of Roma migrants living in Germany”

across the period of 2011 to 2013.⁷ She examines three cases of media coverage within that period – specifically, controversy around the Harz Street apartment complexes in Neukölln Berlin in 2012, the Görlitzer Park evictions in 2011, and the deportation of non-‐EU refugees from Kosovo. She singles out a particular issue, perception or prejudice about the Roma that is central to each controversy, providing an insightful discussion of some of the major themes relating to Roma in German newspaper discourse. However, the study lacks a consistent or explicit methodological approach to her data. The most relevant elements of her research are those in which she links the central theme of each news story to a wider issue pertaining to the treatment of Roma in Germany, drawing a clear link between media narratives and their impact in creating and/or reinforcing

prejudices among the public.

Jo Richardson of De Montfort University in the UK takes a more rigorous approach to the examination of media narratives surrounding the Roma in the UK, investigating “why [the negative portrayal of Roma, Gypsies and Travellers in Britain] matters through an example of a specific discourse incident in late 2013/early 2014.”⁸ In doing so she clearly states her normative stance – that there is a problem with this negative portrayal – and outlines a clear

methodology and data sample. Her analysis involves 89 articles drawn from the Lexis Nexis news database relating to the key words “Sheffield” and “Roma”, and she draws on the framework constructed by Ruge & Galtung describing the twelve factors that determine whether events turn into news, commonly referred to as their list of “news values”.⁹ This analysis is then discussed using the theories of Foucault and Laclau & Mouffe, and Richardson draws conclusions about the contagious nature of certain hegemonic discourses in news media and

7 Castañeda, “European Mobilities or Poverty Migration? Discourses on Roma in Germany” p. 1.

8 Jo Richardson, “Roma in the News: An Examination of Media and Political Discourse and What Needs to Change,” People, Place and Policy 8, no. 1 (2014): 51–64,

doi:10.3351/ppp.0008.0001.0005.

9 Ibid. p. 52.

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the theoretical framework of ‘othering’. She argues the need for a new

framework through which to portray and represent Roma issues throughout Europe that encourages a more balanced and positive narrative, and condemns the lack of engagement by the UK government in EU strategies for Roma

inclusion.

Biljana Ratkovic Njegovan at the University of Novi Sad in Serbia takes a different angle to the previous two studies, investigating the impact of Roma-‐

targeted and Romani-‐language media on the perceived image of the group in the wider Serbian society.¹⁰ Njegovan highlights the specific problems faced by the Roma population of Serbia, including chronic poverty, high unemployment, low health protection, and – crucially to my own study – illiteracy and low education.

Her research thus focuses on broadcast media and its role in promoting

inclusiveness, and investigates policy and practices that may help or hinder this inclusiveness. Njegovan’s suggestions for eliminating obstacles to the positive depiction of Roma in mainstream media include the removal of racial

stereotyping and hate speech in the media, the education of media professionals about their responsibility and role in media depictions of the Roma, the

development of campaigns to educate the public, the encouragement and support for Roma-‐produced media and training for Roma journalists, and the development of codes of ethics and self-‐monitoring and sustainable systems surrounding media depiction.¹¹ Her discussion also reflects on the conclusions of a 2008 study on the engagement with Romani-‐language media in Voivodina, which revealed that there was a positive attitude towards broadcasting Roma-‐

targeted media in the majority language of Serbian to open it up to non-‐Roma consumers. Although Njegovan’s research and approach differ significantly from my own, in that she examines the effects of Roma-‐produced media on the

mainstream rather than the integration of Roma voices within the mainstream, her conclusions about the importance of self-‐representation in the media and the ramifications for wider social attitudes are highly relevant.

10 Biljana Ratkovic Njegovan, “Social Integration of Roma People -‐ the Importance and Remit of Roma Media: A Case Study,” Trames 15, no. 1 (2011): 102–19,

doi:10.3176/tr.2011.1.05.

11 Ibid. p. 108.

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There are other studies with less scientific or academic approaches to the subject matter, such as the one carried out by Ana Rodica Stăiculescu and Mirea Gherasim at the University of Bucharest.¹² Their paper examines the role of mass media in perpetuating stereotypes, using the negative depiction of Roma as criminals as an example, and they expound on the danger of these stereotypes as instigators of and justification for violence. While there are several crucial

inconsistencies in their studies, particularly between the data presented and the assertions made in the text, like Castañeda they contribute to the discussion of the link between racism and the media.

More tangentially related studies include discussions regarding cultural policy-‐making in media in Europe, specifically those relating to minorities.

Karina Horsti of the University of Helsinki and Gunilla Hultén of Stockholm University investigate media policies in the Finnish and Swedish public broadcasting services, which highlights the complex nature of creating and ensuring a certain level minority-‐targeted media content within a market values-‐

driven media landscape.¹³ Of particular note is their finding that despite European-‐level recognition for multicultural media, “interviews with Swedish journalists with migrant backgrounds reveal disappointment with their company’s efforts to put diversity efforts into practice... [they] often feel that much of the company’s diversity efforts are mere window-‐dressing.”¹⁴

Finally, Melanie Ram at California State University presents a wider

examination of the potentially harmful effects of EU-‐level measures against racial inequality, specifically directed towards addressing inequality among Roma groups.¹⁵ She argues that the EU’s efforts have created a “schizophrenic model of minority protection in Central and Eastern Europe.”¹⁶ Although inclusive

legislation, funds, organisations, and projects have been created, they exist in the

12 Ana Rodica Stăiculescu and Mircea Gherasim, “Roma Representation in the Media,”

Contemporary Readings in Law and Social Justice 5, no. 2 (2013): 947–55.

13 Karina Horsti and Gunilla Hultén, “Directing Diversity: Managing Cultural Diversity Media Policies in Finnish and Swedish Public Service Broadcasting,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 14, no. 2 (2011): 209–27, doi:10.1177/1367877910382180.

14 Ibid. p. 221.

15 Ram, “Europeanization and the Roma: Spreading the Norms of Inclusion and Exclusion.”

16 Ibid. p. 2.

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same space as ingrained and systematic discrimination and exclusion, which is often reinforced by rhetoric from the media, as well as politicians and the general public. Ram’s research examines Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic for evidence of this conflict, thus providing valuable context at a European level for the discursive themes and political positioning of Roma, and more importantly she highlights the role that Western European countries such as Germany and Sweden play in influencing the behaviour of Central and Eastern states.

While each of these studies contributes to the broader picture of Roma representation in the media, there is a conspicuous and telling lack of research that looks specifically at Roma voices in mainstream media discourse. While the studies discussed above highlight the impact of negative media portrayals, they do not fully investigate the Roma’s lack of access to the discourse itself, and by extension to self-‐determination in the public eye. I propose a methodological approach to comparative analysis of the prevalence of Roma voices in

mainstream newspapers in multiple countries, and argue the need for further research into the importance of self-‐determination for the Roma within public discourse.

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2 Context

The Roma face the worst of all worlds – hounded from the East by a rising tide of fascism and unchecked popular racism, despised in the South as part of a foreign influx, rejected from paths to citizenship and settlement in the North. Wherever they are in Europe, they face a variation of a pan-‐European, anti-‐Roma racism.¹⁷

This chapter provides an overview of the situation of Roma at a European level, at the national level within Germany and Sweden, and a discussion of the importance and relevance of media studies. It begins with a review of the

literature pertaining to the history and contemporary context of Roma in Europe, and continues with a brief description of the complicated place Roma occupy in European history and societies, with specific reference to Sweden and Germany.

This is followed by a review of literature related to the examination of the media, which leads into a discussion of the specific trends in media representation of Roma in Europe. The chapter concludes with an overview of the six newspapers examined in this study.

2.1 Context Literature Review I – The Roma in Europe

The field of literature around the historical and contemporary political and social context of European Roma communities has yielded a number of interesting discussions in recent years. The European Decade of Roma Inclusion, which concludes in 2015, has prompted a greater interest in this topic. The following is a very brief selection of articles and reports that I have found to be of particular relevance to my study and hypothesis.

Adrian Marsh, a British researcher of Romany-‐Traveller origins, provides a concise yet illustrative description of the sheer diversity and breadth of the Roma communities across Europe in his article accompanying an animated history of the Roma on the Open Society Foundation’s website. He describes the way in which these communities are united by a sense of “Otherness” in

17 Liz Fekete, “Europe against the Roma,” Race & Class 55, no. 3 (2014): 61, doi:10.1177/0306396813509196.

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European societies, and the many linguistic and cultural links that form part of the Romani heritage.¹⁸

Aidan McGarry of Brighton University problematises the political

representation of Roma peoples in Europe, and explores the heterogeneity of the groups that fall under the umbrella term “Roma”.¹⁹ His research does not seek to validate the representations themselves, but rather to explore the link between representation of and representation for Roma people, and whether multiple representations foster or prohibit inclusion of communities in the public sphere.

Despite the fact that McGarry focuses on representation in political institutions, many of his ideas translate effectively to a discussion of media representations, particularly as regards the agency of Roma actors in contributing to and defining prevalent images and ideas about Roma identity.

Liz Fekete, director of the Institute of Race Relations in the UK, outlines how events from the division of the Balkan states and the bloody conflicts of the early-‐ to mid-‐1990s to the Global Economic Crisis (GEC) have contributed to the continued displacement and alienation of Roma groups across the continent. The GEC, she argues, has created a new framing of Romani peoples within the “post-‐

austerity fear of the destitute ‘scrounger’”,²⁰ in which the racism experienced by the Roma for centuries is compounded by classism and hatred of the poor. While this is not a new combination, Fekete argues that the relevance of issues facing the Roma are particularly relevant at this juncture, as “Roma – largely

unrepresented in parliaments, and whose vote is deemed insignificant by mainstream political parties – are particularly vulnerable at times of severe economic depression and rising nationalism”.²¹

Lars Lindgren and Heidi Pikkarainen, both of whom work in the Swedish Office of the Ombudsman against Ethnic Discrimination, describe the

discrimination experienced by Roma from the Swedish social system in an article

18 Adrian Marsh, “Gypsies, Roma, Travellers: An Animated History,” Open Society Foundations, 2013, http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/gypsies-‐roma-‐

travellers-‐animated-‐history.

19 McGarry, “Roma as a Political Identity: Exploring Representations of Roma in Europe.”

20 Fekete, “Europe against the Roma.” p. 60.

21 Ibid. p. 60.

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for Roma Rights Quarterly in 2007.²² They deem the position and conditions of the Roma to be alarmingly poor despite government initiatives, and assert that there is considerable under-‐reporting of cases of discrimination against Roma due to a lack of trust in authorities and the normalisation of everyday

discrimination.

Reports published in 2012 by the European Union Agency for

Fundamental Rights (FRANET) for both Sweden and Germany note that since ethnicity is not recorded in either country’s census, there is a lack of accurate statistical data specifically relevant to Roma.²³ While the FRANET reports cover a wide range of issues, the segments concerning education and active citizenship (including political participation) are of particular interest to this thesis.

Information on the education of Roma in the respective countries gives us insight into the accessibility of the written newspaper format as a forum for discussion – a certain level of academic achievement may be required to work as a journalist for a newspaper, and even reading (and thus being able to respond to) articles requires a standard of literacy. Similarly, the level of participation in government and civic life gives us an indication of the political agency exercised by the Roma in each country, and the extent of the ‘official’ representation recognised by the government and thus media outlets.

2.2 Who are the Roma?

The term Roma is somewhat misleading as a social or cultural idea, as it covers a geographically diverse and enormously heterogeneous range of people. Heide Castañeda identifies this as deeply problematic for discussion of so-‐called ‘Roma issues,’ explaining that “many analyses... portray a monolithic ‘Roma culture’ or a singular community exposed to discrimination... ‘Roma’ is in fact an umbrella

22 Lars Lindgren and Heidi Pikkarainen, “Discrimination against Roma in the Swedish Social System,” Roma Rights Quarterly, no. 4 (2007): 23–24.

23 Skaraborg Institute for Research and Development, Sweden FRANET National Focal Point -‐ Social Thematic Study: The Situation of Roma (Skövde, Sweden, 2012),

http://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/situation-‐of-‐roma-‐2012-‐se.pdf; Claudia

Lechner, Germany FRANET National Focal Point -‐ Social Thematic Study: The Situation of Roma European (Bamberg, Germany, 2012),

http://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/situation-‐of-‐roma-‐2012-‐1-‐de.pdf.

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term for many distinct ethnic identities and is fluid, contextual and contested.”²⁴ Adrian Marsh describes the term Roma as encompassing Romanichals in

England; Kalé in Wales and Finland; Travellers in Ireland (who are not Roma), Scotland, Sweden, and Norway; Manouche from France; Gitano from Spain; Sinti from Germany, Poland, Austria, and Italy; Ashakli from Kosovo; Egyptians from Albania; Beyash from Croatia; Romanlar from Turkey; Domari from Palestine and Egypt; Lom from Armenia, and many others.²⁵ Furthermore, he notes, their faiths include Catholic Manouche, Mercheros, and Sinti; Muslim Ashkali and Romanlar; Pentecostal Kalderash and Lovari; Protestant Travellers; Anglican Gypsies; and Baptist Roma.²⁶ Even within Sweden and Germany, there is a huge amount of variation within the groups commonly identified as Roma.

This complexity presents a serious problem when attempting to examine the Roma as a transnational minority within Europe. Indeed, the unique

situations of each national minority group within each national context has provided both researchers and policy makers with something of a quandary – although the Roma as a ‘whole’ are experiencing severe levels of discrimination across the continent, defining the cultural, social or even linguistic parameters of that ‘whole’ seems impossible.

McGarry, however, proposes a solution – instead of attempting to confine the definition of ‘Roma’ to cultural or social heritage, the Roma minority can instead be understood as a political identity. This allows for a more fluid and complex understanding of who belongs to the group. McGarry asserts that:

...we can research Roma as an explicitly political project by exploring the relationship between identity, inclusion and policy and can set aside problematic ontological questions. There exists a separation between Roma as a group of diverse individuals and cultures in which self-‐determination and self-‐ascription are key on the one hand, and the political identity of Roma which is constructed as more coherent, on the other. These dual processes of identity construction are not

24 Castañeda, “European Mobilities or Poverty Migration?” p. 2.

25 Marsh, “Gypsies, Roma, Travellers: An Animated History.” para. 2.

26 Ibid. para. 3.

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just reproduced in different political contexts but also involve numerous actors with diverse motives.²⁷

This might be compared to Stuart Hall’s reference to the usage of the term “black”

to describe a common experience of racism and marginalisation in Britain, despite the people making up that group having very different histories,

traditions and ethnic identities.²⁸ The comparison has its limits, however – both terms are complex, carrying other connotations and usages at a European and international level.

McGarry’s framing allows this study to examine the representation of Roma in Sweden and Germany with the understanding that each country has a specific and unique history and relationship with the Roma minority, while also recognising the common discrimination faced by Roma communities in both countries. It does, however, have the drawback of defining the parameters of

‘Roma’ according to the understanding of the majority, rather than the members of the minority themselves. This is a risk and a common pitfall of Roma

representation, indicative of the Foucaldian power structures at play within academic, political and media discourse. Richardson argues that the changing portrayal of Roma identities serves the purpose of “keep[ing] identities from fixing long enough for them to be rebutted”.²⁹ I have attempted to address this issue by integrating an interview and discussion with members of the Roma community in Sweden, however as McGarry astutely points out, it is difficult to say that one voice is capable of representing the Roma as a whole.³⁰

2.2 Europe’s Minority

While looking at the Roma as a transnational minority group across Europe allows us to identify patterns and common problems regarding discrimination, marginalisation, lack of access to resources and infrastructure, and – as in this

p. 759.

28 Stuart Hall, “New Ethnicities,” in Modern Criticism and Theory, ed. David Lodge and Nigel Wood, Third (Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd, 2008), 581–91.

29 Richardson, “Roma in the News: An Examination of Media and Political Discourse and What Needs to Change.” p. 59.

p. 759.

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thesis – representation, there are significant issues with framing these problems on a European political level. As McGarry points out, by designating Roma issues as pertaining to a “European minority”, the responsibility for addressing them is passed from state governments to the European Union, Council of Europe or similar transnational bodies.³¹ This serves to effectively dilute that responsibility, as instead of a national or local government dealing with fairly localised

problems directly, a large and notoriously bureaucratic entity is tasked with addressing a hugely complicated and diverse range of problems across the continent.

Castañeda elaborates on another aspect of this issue, stating that the Roma are further marginalised by this delegation of responsibility due to the fact that “... their alleged ‘Europeanness’ (and subsequent lack of national belonging) also functions to exclude them symbolically from their own national spaces.”³² This is echoed by McGarry, as he states that rhetoric framing the Roma as European “fuels the image of Roma as not constitutive of the dominant nation and not full citizens of the states in which they reside.”³³ Indeed, through

McGarry’s explanation we see that the movement to classify and understand the Roma as a European group, which was begun by Roma activists in the 1970s, has in time been used by national governments for their own ends and to the

detriment of the Roma populations in those nations. He goes so far as to state that while Roma activists sought new political audiences for their political concerns, state actors instead saw the movement as an opportunity to halt the westward migration of Romani populations during the EU expansion.³⁴ This deliberate shift in the intended meaning and purpose of the movement is key to understanding the importance of Romani actors being able to contribute to discussions regarding their identity and agency at all levels.

Moreover, the EU’s ability to act on pan-‐European Roma issues has been condemned by writers such as Ram, who calls EU efforts “top down and

31 Ibid. p. 767.

32 Castañeda, “European Mobilities or Poverty Migration? Discourses on Roma in Germany.” p. 4.

p. 767.

34 Ibid. p. 766-‐67.

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seemingly half-‐hearted,” with endless numbers of positive proposals and

statements and no measurable positive action or results.³⁵ Instead of fostering an interest in actually improving the situation of Roma populations within their respective countries, she argues that Brussels has simply demanded policies from prospective EU members. “The EU provided impetus and funds to

candidate countries to demonstrate they were doing something to address the problems Roma faced,” Ram says. “What the EU did not do, however, is

substantially change views on the need for minority rights when they were not already present, or erase fundamental prejudices regarding Roma.”³⁶ While the existence of the policies and measures along with agencies dedicated to

promoting the causes and concerns of Roma communities is a step in the right direction, without the will to actually change the situation these measures cannot be effective.

The East-‐West divide in Europe plays a significant role in the treatment of Romani peoples and Roma-‐related issues. Fekete details the extreme violence and prejudice experienced by Roma in the south and east of Europe, both from government and police forces and from communities themselves.³⁷ Ram argues that anti-‐Roma racism is ingrained all across Europe, and not just in central and eastern states, and posits that the northern and western states have set the tone for the treatment of Roma throughout. “EU Member States from CEE [Central and Eastern Europe] have continually looked to Western Europe for laws and

practices on which to base (or justify) their own policies, including restrictive ones,” she argues. “When the EU and other international organisations have criticised their policies or proposals, they have frequently pointed to specific examples of similar policies in older EU Member States."³⁸ Despite the

proclaimed liberal, progressive politics of many northern and western states, including Sweden and Germany, the contentious issue of integrating but also catering for the specificities of Romani social and cultural heritage has proven

35 Ram, “Europeanization and the Roma: Spreading the Norms of Inclusion and Exclusion.” p. 3.

36 Ibid. p. 7-‐8.

37 Fekete, “Europe against the Roma.”

38 Ram, “Europeanization and the Roma: Spreading the Norms of Inclusion and Exclusion.” p. 18.

Unheard Voices: Representation of Roma in Swedish and German Media Discourse

Acknowledgements

Table of Contents

1 Introduction

2 Context