What's in a Name? Causes and Consequences of Labelling Minorities as “National” or “Migrant”: Roma in Italy and Spain
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12446 |
| Date | 01 June 2018 |
| Published date | 01 June 2018 |
| Author | Tina Magazzini |
What’s in a Name? Causes and Consequences
of Labelling Minorities as “National”or
“Migrant”: Roma in Italy and Spain
Tina Magazzini*
This article analyses how Roma are represented in official policy narratives in Italy and Spain
by comparing the four cycles of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National
Minorities in the two countries. By tracing the representations that the Italian and Spanish gov-
ernments hold (and make) about the Roma, I sketch out the different categories that EU-
ropean countries recur to as organizing principles to “other”underprivileged minorities. Based
on the tailored-approaches in which both Italy and Spain engage in framing Roma as either a
“national”minority or not, I suggest that constructing or “producing”a minority in our imag-
ined communities as characterized by national, cultural, social or migrant characteristics relies
more on political expediency than on objective analytical categories.
INTRODUCTION
“When Iuse a word”, Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,
“it means just what I choose it to mean –neither more nor less.”
“The question is,”said Alice,
“whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,”said Humpty Dumpty,
“which is to be master –that’s all.”
(Lewis Carroll, Through The Looking Glass)
Social cohesion, migrant integration and Roma inclusion feature prominently in national and
European research and policy agendas, and represent one of the most pressing priorities identified
by European institutions (Council of Europe, 2016c, 2016d, European Commission, 2015, 2016).
Within the far-ranging debates on migration and integration, “Roma integration”has become a field
in its own right,
1
yet one that has traditionally been addressed in isolation from the wider dynamics
of migration and integration regimes, growing inequalities and minority governance.
Recent scholarship has started to recognize the need to overcome such “splendid isolation”(Will-
ems, 1997, pp. 305–306), acknowledging that the framing of the Roma as a minority “in need of inte-
gration”is relevant not only for minority protection but also for issues revolving around European
citizenship, the surge in populist xenophobic parties and the so-called “migrant crisis”
2
(Kostka,
2015; Sardeli
c, 2016; Sigona & Treheran, 2009; Vermeersch, 2013; Yıldız & Genova, 2017).
The relevance of Roma political and legal classifiers for the study of migration in Europe is, in
my opinion, two-fold: on the one hand, Roma integration policies are by and large a product of the
* University of Deusto, Faculty of Social and Human Sciences
doi: 10.1111/imig.12446
©2018 The Author
International Migration ©2018 IOM
International Migration Vol. 56 (3) 2018
ISSN 0020-7985Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
EU freedom of movement. On the other hand, the recent influx of refugees in Europe has rekindled
what has been called “the last acceptable form of racism”, Romanophobia (McGarry, 2017).
Regarding the claim that freedom of movement is at the root of Roma-targeted policies, a Euro-
pean Commission desk officer and member of the EU Roma Task Force commented on the cre-
ation of the EU Roma Integration Strategy: “The tension was already high with Italy and Maroni
3
even before the French evictions and repatriations [of Romanian Roma] of 2010.
4
As to the 2004
enlargement countries, they didn”t even want to see the problem: as a matter of fact, they actually
preferred for the Roma to migrate westwards.”(Email exchange, my translation from Italian, 17
April 2017).
In other words, by 2010 the ongoing so-called “nomad emergency”decrees adopted by Italy and
the repatriations of Romanian Roma carried out by France had pushed the issue of Roma integra-
tion high on the European agenda, more than any poverty level or discrimination suffered by Roma
individuals or communities could have done.
Regarding the assertion that the so-called “migration crisis”has repercussions on the attitudes of
mainstream media and politicians towards Roma minorities, as Sardeli
c and McGarry pointed out:
Time and again, Romani communities have been drawn into national asylum policy debates raising
issues of inclusion, integration and belonging. [...] In fact, the failure of different states to integrate
Roma has been used as a justification to exclude other asylum seekers.
(Sardeli
c & McGarry, 2017)
The present article aims to contribute to the abovementioned strand of research, which is situated
at the intersection of public policy, migration, citizenship and Romani studies. I do so by analyzing
the representation that the governments of Italy and Spain hold (and make) about the Roma as
either “foreigners/ migrants”or “nationals”.
In the first section, I situate the theoretical debate on framing the Roma and in the second section
I justify the choice of a comparative analysis between Italy and Spain. The third section analyses
how the representations of the Roma as a minority(ies) have developed and evolved in the two
countries over the years. In the fourth section I situate these representations within the wider con-
text of the politics of identity in contemporary Europe, and finally I draw some conclusions on
why the same ethnic minority in two relatively similar countries is constructed in such different
ways.
What emerges from an analysis of the legal frameworks adopted by Italy and Spain with respect
to Roma minorities is that both governments need to address two audiences –their own national
polity and European institutions. For this reason, the interpretation they make regarding “what kind
of minority”the Roma constitute in official policies are ridden with incoherencies that stem from
trying to use the European institutions’vocabulary in ways that fit with, and bend to, national
purposes.
THE FRAMING OF ROMA IDENTITY AND CLASSIFIERS IN EUROPE
In his 2016 book Those Who Count: Expert Practices of Roma Classification, Mihai Surdu makes
a convincing case that, rather than studying Romani culture, language or traditions, the most effec-
tive way to make sense of the current socio-political standing of the Roma in Europe –and of what
Yildiz and De Genova call “their production (and reproduction) as a distinctly racialized “group’”
(Yıldız & Genova, 2017) –is a study of the ways in which policymakers classify Roma people.
The discourse on Roma identity, which spills over into the more recent Roma integration debate,
has been traditionally divided in two main strands: the Romani studies literature has conceptualized
204 Magazzini
©2018 The Author. International Migration ©2018 IOM
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