Advocacy Representation and Resistance

Abstract

This article offers the case study of two nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that have tailored and improved their communication efforts so that politicians, governments, and international organizations hear, and do something about, the plight of the Roma, the most discriminated against European minority. This study examines advocacy publications and describes the discursive repertoire available to European NGOs working for Roma rights post-Communism. The analysis suggests that advocacy communication is fraught with imperfections and therefore resistance takes the shape of ambivalent discourses, both strong and ambiguous, and nonetheless disrupting fixed representations that have motivated historic and contemporary anti-Gypsyism; at the same time, it concludes that the movement for Roma rights is in need of clearer organizational and political mobilization if it is to succeed in the model of other vibrant social movements.

Keywords

advocacy communication Roma/Gypsy resistance NGOs discourse social movements

A movement for Roma rights has developed in the wake of the fall of Communism in Europe, intending to raise awareness about discrimination against the Roma across the continent and most overtly in Central and Eastern European countries. The Roma as an ethnic group is recognized to be the most discriminated against European minority, according to scholars, politicians, mainstream press reports, and advocacy (Erjavec, 2001; United Nations, 2001). While governmental organizations have most recently sought to monitor the situation via integration projects, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have worked to build the case of anti-Roma discrimination and lobbied to include the Roma voice in decision-making. Advocacy groups have further argued that what and how issues are communicated about makes a difference. This article explores the genre of NGO talk, focused on the case study of two of the largest NGOs working for the Roma, seen at the intersection of intentionality and focused agenda, mainstream discourses, and resistant voices, as they are included and defined by the movement.

Advocacy for Roma rights has received thin public and scholarly attention when compared to other social movements, for various reasons that include the nonthreatening display of resistance and public dissent, the absence of a visible political mass movement, or of a threat to national or territorial integrity, and most evidently the lack of media attention to its cause. This study attempts to fill that gap. It contributes to the communication literature on social movements and resistance by examining the movement for Roma rights, insufficiently explored (with a few notable exceptions such as Blasco, 2002; Vermeersch, 2005, 2006). It argues that advocacy talk is necessarily ambivalent if it wishes to be “resistance” and disrupt fixed stereotypical representations that have motivated historic and contemporary anti-Roma racism.

This study is necessarily interdisciplinary, bridging studies of communication, which emphasize understanding the strategies and choices embedded within NGO communication, with critical, cultural, and postcolonial scholarship. It thus has two closely related aims. The first is to chronicle talk about anti-Roma discrimination, an intentional communication endeavor meant to stand in contrast to public hatred, violence, and institutionalized segregation. The NGOs’ declared that the mission has been to protect and speak out for the Roma. Yet does adopting a Romani agenda and viewpoint necessarily ensure that advocacy communication is radically different than, and reactive to, dominating discourses and practices? Therefore the second purpose here is to view NGO discourses, beyond text and strategy alone, in the context of historical, cultural, and international hierarchical planes, where a variety of forces motivate and propel communication about the Roma (see Shome & Hegde, 2002). For these reasons, critical discourse analysis—as a method and theoretical positioning—is used here to analyze advocacy texts as sociopolitical practices. In what follows, the so-called “Roma problem” is explicated, before turning to the development of the movement for Roma rights and a layout of methodological assumptions and steps. In-depth longitudinal and historical analyses of advocacy discourses post-Communism and throughout the enlargement stages of the European Union (EU hereafter) constitute the next section, providing insight into the current practices of communicating about the Roma by Roma intellectuals, advocates, and activists in contemporary Europe.

But first, a word on terminology. Advocates for the Roma opt for different terms when referring to the ethnic minority, as do different European (and worldwide) communities. Anthropological or sociological research identifies tribal names (such as the Romanian Căldăraşi); others adopt wider group names (such as the British Travellers); still others use “Gypsy” as an ethnic appellative, rather than as a derogatory word. Romani intellectuals, NGO workers, advocates, politicians, scholars, and some ethnic groups themselves, however, have adopted “Roma,” regarded at the moment to be politically correct. The popularity of “Roma” has risen, in reaction to the stereotypical and derogatory usage of “Gypsy”—with its linguistic variants of “tsygane” (the German “Zigeuner,” the Hungarian “cigany,” the French “tsigane,” or the Romanian “ţigan,” to name a few) or the British “pikeys.” European NGOs have worked to shape a Romani identity, around the construct “Roma,” to use as basis for lobbying and to build solidarity around the cause for rights. Without suggesting homogeneity of the ethnic minority, this study uses “Roma,” the term of choice for most advocacy writing here analyzed.

The Roma Problem

Scholars, human rights organizations, public figures, and institutions recognize the disadvantaged status of Roma communities as the “quintessential outsiders of the European imagination” (Fonseca, 1997, p. 18). They are also Europe’s largest minority, numbering millions of people (EU platform, 2009). Although official censuses and Roma representatives do not always agree upon the exact population size in each country, for various political and cultural reasons (see Csepeli & Simon, 2004), the status of an ethnic minority is granted to the Roma, continent-wide. What I call here the Roma problem refers to the ethnic communities’ socio-politico-economic and cultural struggles to overcome poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and low education levels, as well as poor health. It involves both official pressures and projects toward “integration” and social “inclusion,” and communities’ own challenges and wishes to live a better life. Ultimately, the Roma problem is about the work for harmonious interethnic living, complicated by a history of discrimination and othering, segregation, and marginalization.

In post-1989 Europe, overt discrimination and violence coexist with public outrage at such continued intolerance and with policy changes funneled by human rights organizations. International governmental organizations such as the EU, the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE hereafter), the United Nations, and national governments themselves have increasingly paid attention to the Roma for several reasons—including the memories of the Holocaust/Pogrom and of post-Cold War segregation, sterilization, and eugenics policies, and the exposure of ethnic and hate crimes in media reports (Bancroft, 2005). Integration as a concept and policy strategy has been increasingly popular post-Communism. However, governmental projects of safeguarding the Roma have continued to be accompanied by discriminatory practices (Bancroft, 2005; McVeigh, 1997; van Noije, 2010).

Representations of the Roma in communication and mediated artifacts have been a site of contradictions and tensions characteristic of a contemporary global society challenged by immigration, border politics, human rights talk, intermingling, and interethnic conflict. In mainstream forms of entertainment, mediated, artistic, literary, and public spheres, the “Gypsies” are caught between competing representations, most of them essentially “negative” (the unwanted, poor, dirty, unhealthy, genetically inclined to commit crime, irresponsible, promiscuous, and, above all, the inferior racial other). Other imagery has been considered to be “positive” (the bohemian, romantic nomads, and artists), especially in non-European contexts, where a wider familiarity with Johnny Depp’s Gypsy character in Chocolat prevails over images of burning caravans, common on the European continent. Many scholars in a variety of disciplines and NGOs alike confirm and describe such depictions (Cohn, 1973; Csepeli & Simon, 2004; Erjavec, 2001; Kende, 2000; Lemon, 2000; Schneeweis, 2009) and further suggest the difficulty (and/or impossibility) of representing a “true European minority” (ERTF, 2005) outside dominant ideologies.

Yet observations from postcolonial scholarship complicate the understanding of practices of representation and resistance (see Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin, 2006). Asking to what extent NGO discourses (re)produce and/or resist dominant constructs implicates recognizing that resistance is not simple opposition, negation, or exclusion (Bhabha, 2006). Drawing from Said (2006), beyond fighting physical intrusion, ideological resistance involves the recovery and consolidation of a community—and herein lies the grassroots work of European NGOs, dedicated to local healing, training, and providing services. Yet, Said goes on to say, “[t]hat is the partial tragedy of resistance, that it must to a certain degree work to recover forms already established or at least influenced by” (p. 95) the dominating, mainstream culture. For this reason, this article further asks about the possibility of representation outside the norm—that is, without invoking and inevitably reinforcing familiar imagery.

A Movement for Roma Rights

In the wake of the 1990s revolutions, a movement for Roma rights has emerged, building upon attempts at organization dating back to the 1960s and 1970s (Vermeersch, 2006). The focus of advocacy has been to raise attention to discrimination, to offer a voice to the marginalized, an alternative representation within a system historically discriminatory, and to call for international protection of the Roma’s human and civil rights (Schneeweis, 2009; Vermeersch, 2005). A numerical assessment of the wealth of NGOs, institutions, committees, and interest groups is a difficult feat. Some advocacy groups resurface in a variety of initiatives, both public and private; some are better organized than others; some are registered and with clear agendas, while others have been more informal or transitory; some groups have solid financial backing, while others do not; some focus on socioeconomic projects, while others have initiated the establishment of ethnic political parties (Vermeersch, 2006). These bodies form a transnational advocacy network (Keck & Sikkink, 1998), committed to criticizing lax governmental policies toward the Roma and human rights abuses, demanding policy and legal changes, and bridging communication between Roma communities and national and international governmental agencies like the OSCE, the Council of Europe, and the EU (Vermeersch, 2006). Therefore, Kende’s remark in 2000 that Roma activism could not yet be seen as a movement per se no longer stands.

Activists and advocates working for the rights of the Roma have primarily focused on the elimination of discrimination toward the improvement of the quality of life,¹ working alongside socioeconomic, political, and cultural public and private efforts in Central and Eastern Europe to improve civic and political engagement and voting (Vermeersch, 2005), employment rates, housing and education conditions, and the health status of the impoverished Romani communities, to name but a few of these efforts (Schneeweis, 2011). Yet the Romani movement is uniquely characterized by thin public attention to its cause when compared to other social movements. Vermeersch (2006) discussed how Romani advocacy “has never been seen as a threat to the stability and the territorial integrity of an existing state” (p. 2). This, along with the NGOs’ failure to rally the Roma into a political mass movement, visible in mass demonstrations and protests—and therefore forcing their agenda to become news that must be reported—are contributing reasons why political spheres and scholarship alike tend to ignore, or not take seriously enough, Roma actors and their supporters in contemporary Europe. As such, the movement is nearly absent from media coverage, and nearly invisible in the public sphere.

Remarks on Method

NGO writing was treated here to be reproducing and creating discourses circulated in the European space. Discourses do not just describe ideas or peoples, but they produce them and thus contribute to a fabric of knowledge (Foucault, 1972). By talking or writing, the reality of what the Roma are and how non-Roma interact with Roma is perpetually (re)created (see Richardson, 2006). In other words, discourses offer possibilities of communication—out of the range of rules and boundaries that they set in place in a particular historical conjuncture. Approaching representations as discourses can help contextualize what is commonly seen as stereotypes and expose such stereotypes as they are embedded in larger hierarchical social structures, as a “complex, ambivalent, contradictory mode of representation” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 70). In this view, “Gypsy” can never completely mean any one thing, nor can “Roma.” Yet the meanings associated with Gypsy and Roma in specific discourses are deployed and put to uses that fix such meanings into “truths.” Once the Gypsy becomes collapsed with images of poverty, unemployment, and poor health, for instance, and once those images are reproduced and circulated frequently enough in a variety of mediated and interpersonal practices, non-Roma publics or officials have a limited range of possible reactions when interacting with the Roma. Historic discrimination and genocide against the Roma have been possible because of such immutable meanings and beliefs about one group’s essential superiority over the other. As such, linguistic choices are not accidental, but informed and meaningful (Fairclough, 2004).

Critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995; van Dijk, 1999) was used to suggest possible links between texts and power, dominance, and inequality, as reflected in socio-cultural practices around and about Roma issues. Texts were treated as more than linguistic and formal structures to denote systems of rules and practices (Macdonell, 1986; Terdiman, 1985; van Dijk, 1999). Starting with a reading of the NGO materials to identify statements about the Roma, the analysis compared texts to each other, in an attempt to identify the common story—the “parallels and the common genealogies that unite . . . apparently disparate occasions of discourse” (Spurr, 1999, pp. 3-4). Both object positions (discriminatory, cultural, or traditional practices referred to) and subject positions (the people talked about, who does the speaking, and for whom) were examined, and then categorized thematically, paying specific attention to the object positions associated with each subject position. Linguistic choices (vocabulary, metaphors, descriptions, images) were weighed alongside writing practices of organizing and prioritizing information, by highlighting some key elements, generalizing others, and leaving others out. Guiding questions in the analysis included: How are the Roma described? How is discrimination talked about? How is resistance talked about, if at all (explicitly or implicitly)?

Description of Materials

Of the different NGOs advocating for the Roma, two presented specific interest because of their size, visibility, legitimacy, and degree of involvement with national and international bodies such as the EU, the Council of Europe, or the European Court of Human Rights. They are the largest and most visible internationally—and therefore, the two NGOs were taken to signify political legitimacy and leadership within the emerging movement for Roma rights. The first, the Project on Ethnic Relations (PER), was created in 1991 to prevent ethnic conflict in Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the countries of the former Soviet Union. Funded by the American and European governments (among them USAID) and nonprofit organizations,² PER conducts intervention and dialogue programs, as well as training, education, and research at international, national, and community levels (Project on Ethnic Relations, n.d.). The second selected NGO, the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) was formed in 1996 to carry out litigation, international advocacy, research and policy development, and trainings. ERRC is a member of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights and has consultative status with the Council of Europe and the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (European Roma Rights Centre, n.d.). It was the first human rights organization to monitor and legally represent the rights of the Roma.

In total, 80 documents were read and analyzed for discursive strategies.³ These materials target policy-makers, decision-making governmental and nongovernmental institutions, and the media. Most are never shared with Romani communities; some were used in subsequent workshops, trainings, as knowledge within the institution of advocacy builds upon itself. It emerges that, although Roma communities may not be exposed to communication materials directly, they are introduced to language and objectives at a second-order level of argumentation, where values are interpreted and internalized (Grin & van de Graaf, 1996), in interaction with NGO workers and specifically localized materials, which are nonetheless affected and inspired by pan-European advocacy ideology (Schneeweis, 2011). As an analysis of texts, this discussion is beyond the scope of this article, yet I comment elsewhere on the problems of translation, not so much of texts themselves, but of concepts, job-related ethic and attitudes, and politically correct vision of interethnic interaction socially and in work environments (Schneeweis, 2012). Likewise, an analysis of efficacy of these discourses belongs to institutional analysis or to international treaty-monitoring bodies; however, it must be noted that both PER and ERRC publications assess the effectiveness of their own campaigns, beyond awareness-raising, litigation, and working toward policy change, and such assessment is visible in the moments of self-praise embedded in the discourses of discrimination, rights, and integration, described below.

Assessing who works and contributes writing for these organizations—that is, who speaks for and about the Roma—is a problematic task. Not all NGO staff members have public resumes or biographies to identify their ethnic background and personal history. It is evident that not all advocates are Roma, neither are they all non-Roma. Some scholars have identified ERRC in particular to be a “non-Romani advocacy organization” (Vermeersch, 2006, p. 208), yet at the time of this research, several self-identified Romani authors had published their views in ERRC’s materials and several Roma worked as ERRC staff. Most NGOs also include cultural and national diversity in their ranks, having offices located in Western, Central, and Eastern European countries.⁴

During the time period analyzed, various developments have affected and shaped NGO communication—and the Roma communities most generally. To name a few, aside from the more obvious democratization processes that followed the fall of Communist regimes from 1989 to 1990, a moral panic marked the summer of 1992, when Roma refugees in Germany were attacked by extremists in Rostock, Germany; New Age Traveller summer festivals have raised waves of fear and political tension in the United Kingdom, especially in the early 1990s; a refugee panic took over Western Europe and Canada in summer-fall of 1997, when several hundreds Central and Eastern European Roma immigrated to the United Kingdom and Canada; numerous institutional and extremist attacks marked the Eastern European Roma localities, including, to name just one, the attempt at official segregation of a Roma community apart and away from non-Roma residences, in one northeastern Romanian town, in the fall of 2001; the Roma gained public attention in the midst of the drafting, revising, and signing of the EU Constitution, when constructs such as integration, immigration, citizenship, and minority status took center stage in public discourse, as did the accession waves into the EU in 2004 and 2007. Yet this study shows (and as is evident in the relaying of analysis below) that such events have not dictated representation in unique, disconnected moments; instead, the NGOs’ discursive strategies have stayed fairly consistent and uniform in time and across the publications analyzed.

Advocacy Discourses in NGO Texts

Six discourses were identified in the NGO texts: The predominant mode of talking constructs the Roma as a victim of discrimination; a second discourse blames racism on state institutions; a third promotes integration; advocacy for Roma rights is a fourth discourse; a fifth emphasizes the process of building an ethnic identity; finally, the discourse of resistance to majority representations is less frequent, but common nonetheless (see Table 1). These discourses, taken together, constitute a repertoire for advocacy, a range of images and constructions available for representation. They are not confined or unique to advocacy materials, as NGO communication fits into larger orders of public discourse, neither are they mutually exclusive or complete. For instance, state blame is a form of documenting discrimination; likewise, ethno-genesis necessarily draws from resistance vocabulary. As Spurr (1999) discusses in regards to colonial discourses, oftentimes slippages between discourses are likely inevitable and inherent in any taxonomical exercise.

Table 1.

Discourses Identified in NGO Documents.

	Project on ethnic relations		European Roma rights center
Discourses	No. of docs.	% of total	No. of docs.	% of total
Discrimination	36	100	44	100
Blame	23	63.8	44	100
Integration	36	100	42	95.4
Rights	29	80.5	44	100
Ethno-genesis	28	77.7	23	52.2
Resistance	15	41.6	9	20.4
Total number of documents	36		44

Note: All documents were given equal weight in the analysis, irrespective of length, audience, or time at which created and published.

Throughout the 1990s, at the outset of their most visible work toward protection of Roma rights, the two NGOs have different agendas: PER focused mostly on preventing interethnic conflict, while ERRC concentrated on the legal protection of rights, litigation, and using the “law as a tool for social change” (ERRC, 1998d). As both NGOs grew and gained political credibility, their texts included increased attention to ethnic violence and racist attacks, to issues of representation and identity, to discussion of implications of EU enlargement, and to nation-building and territoriality. Throughout the time frame of analysis, some internal challenges marked advocacy as an emergent movement, grasping for direction, leadership, vocabulary, priorities, identity, and political legitimacy. Yet a point of agreement in PER and ERRC advocacy has been the pressing need to fight economic, political, social, and cultural discrimination against the Roma.

Discrimination: The Most Disadvantaged

The foremost job of advocacy has been to document discrimination, defined as anti-Gypsyism, anti-Ciganism, Romanophobia, racism, or xenophobia. The central tenet was the same: The Roma are “the most disadvantaged” (PER, 1994). The NGOs’ work begins with noting discrimination that informs and coalesces both as institutional, governmental, and supranational organizational policies, and as extremist and public anti-Roma attacks. Prevalent in all analyzed documents, the discourse identified problems that characterize the everyday life of Roma across the continent, at the same time as it formulated the complexity of such problems. In a sense, this discourse has been timeless, unconnected to specific instances of discrimination, time periods, or localities; it permeates Romani life across the continent, advocates wrote.

From the early 1990s, the two NGOs framed discrimination as a cycle between racism—dating back to the history of the Holocaust and ethnic cleansing under Communism—and out-of-the-norm behavior, explaining the latter as a result of the former. Advocacy materials have deployed constructs of race and ethnicity to illustrate and explain both contemporary and historic racism—without much definition or preamble of the concepts themselves. NGOs assume the cultural difference of the Roma, as an ethnic non-White group, swiftly contrasted to “reluctant White communities” (ERRC, 1997c). As such, materials explain that the Roma inevitably has meant the unwanted, the “foreigners” and “outsiders in their own country,” largely because of “beliefs about ‘race’” and racial hatred (PER, 1997c, 1999).

Advocacy materials described racially motivated violence, ranging from skinhead assaults to mob law, from police violence to “war time abuses, killings, beatings, torture, abductions, rape, humiliation” (ERRC, 1999b), from lack of prosecution to light-hearted treatment of cases (ERRC, 1998b). In tones of outrage, advocates illustrated how the Roma have been “hunted down” (ERRC, 2001) by skinheads, neo-fascists, nationalists, fundamentalists, and locals alike in incidents of mob violence (PER, 1992). Specific instances of discrimination supported an image of the Roma as unwanted, “‘foreigners’ . . . outsiders in their own country, a perception that has been based largely on beliefs about ‘race’” (PER, 1997c). Photographic and written testimonies underscored this theme of violence. Readers of reports were guided through the pain ensuing from racist attacks, and not just told about it.

Advocacy builds the case for discrimination very clearly and precisely. On the one hand, it amply highlights the dire living conditions of the Roma (around several themes including unemployment, education, housing, health care, the law, and media coverage, as shown below) and, on the other, it explains such conditions by pointing to stereotypes in public discourses that have informed institutionalized (mis)treatment of the minority (Schneeweis, 2012). Both NGOs dedicated a great deal of human and financial resources to gather and present evidence about the difficult everyday life of Romani communities throughout Europe. What is significant in this effort—and what the NGOs contribute in their pivotal role within the movement for Roma rights—is that advocacy explains that what is often labeled as Romani difference (and otherness) is in part due to their victim status. It is because of the social and physical marginalization and segregation in so-called ghettos, without basic utilities and access to roads and to social services (PER, 1992), that Roma struggle in “stupefying poverty” (ERRC, 1996b), unemployment, poor health, child homelessness, and crime (ERRC, 1997a, 2004b; PER, 1996a).

As such, dismal housing opportunities (the issue of “unhousing Roma;” ERRC, 2000b) were represented in the context of ghettoization projects, forced evictions, threats of eviction, demolitions, refusal to rent or sell to Roma, and dire or absent utilities and service for Roma-inhabited buildings (“UN Special Rapporteur finds housing conditions of Romani children in settlements in Greece unacceptable;” ERRC, 2006a). School segregation (ERRC, 1998c), violence and harassment of Roma children by teachers, administrators, parents, and non-Roma students alike, and difficult access to curriculum in Romany were offered both as evidence of racism and as factors that contribute to low school attendance. Health issues, such as low life expectancy, child mortality, and lack of, or difficult access to, health services like ambulance and emergency service, as well as distribution of health care benefits and insurance, and the sterilization of Roma women (a “new example of Romani genocide;” PER, 1997a) contributed to the discursive picture of discrimination against the Roma (see ERRC, 2000c, 2004a, 2004c, 2004d, 2004e, 2006c). Finally, “incredibly distorted” media coverage was offered as evidence for anti-Gypsyism (PER, 2000c). NGO reports repeatedly documented press and broadcasting discrimination and anti-Romani hate speech and framed it in categorical terms: The media play a seminal role in shaping public opinion and in leading to racist views (ERRC, 1998a, 2006a). for instance, in PER’s work, “. . . the media helped to justify the violence and convert victims into perpetrators” (2000a).

The discourse of victimization constitutes a unique contribution that NGOs working for Roma rights make to knowledge about Roma issues—and is often absent in mainstream popular discourses (also see Schneeweis, 2009). And, as a discursive strategy, the more unusual and novel the argument, the more frequently it must be repeated. This is the justification for giving full attention to the case of discrimination in all advocacy texts, for repeatedly reiterating that the Roma are “the less fortunate” (ERRC, 1996b), the “forgotten minority” (PER, 2000b).

Blame: Official Inactivity

If the first discourse describes the process and objects of discrimination, this second representational mode constructs one of its subjects/agents: As such, PER and ERRC texts suggest that the Roma are victims of government inactivity, state officials, a criminal justice system, the education system, police brutality, extremist attacks, local populations, and international organizations alike. These first two discourses work in close connection to one another. Establishing the “truth” of anti-Gypsyism must include an actor to blame. Therefore, advocacy texts have proclaimed that, in post-Communist Europe centered on integration and democratization, it is governments that must—and do not—intervene to protect the Roma; it is state policies that continue to trap the Roma in poverty. This discourse completes the image of the Roma as victims by constructing the villain—a corrupt, failing, and aloof system. It follows that the state—governments and their representatives, institutions, agencies, and projects—fails to seriously intervene in cases of extremist attacks and to improve legal systems that not only delay pursuing cases involving Roma, but allow prejudice to interfere in court behavior and rulings.⁵ The state is to blame for not controlling or monitoring its own institutions engaged in racism. For such purposes, the discourse uses evidence to restructure arguments that fit with the discourse’s agenda (Fairclough, 2004). The state can always do more to help and protect the Roma. Oftentimes, this goal was discursively enforced by using strong, clear, and unequivocal phrasing, such as: “Official inactivity creates impunity and tacitly vindicates violence against Roma” (ERRC, 1996a); “Lithuanian authorities forcibly evict five Romani families in winter,” “Romanian school officials refuse enrolment to Romani children” (ERRC, 2005a); or “equal educational opportunity is a mirage” (ERRC, 2004a).

The discourse is particularly productive in international contexts where fears of unwanted immigrants/otherness become triggered—as were talks of an EU Constitution in the early 2000s and the asylum-seeking moral panic of 1997 to 1998, when Eastern European Roma families attempted relocation to the United Kingdom (and Canada), following a positive television program depicting integrated Romani communities. ERRC in particular formulated the discursive tool of “Fortress Europe”—a concept referring to “restrictive laws, policies and practices in Europe aimed at or resulting in the exclusion of noncitizens” (2002b). It is apparent that the NGOs are critical of promises of integration that have encouraged minority policy development; often, such efforts are deemed opportunist.

Particularly frustrating to the NGOs are state attempts to blame the Romani for their own problems—and therefore advocacy switches the focus around, and blames in turn the institutional actor involved in anti-Gypsyism. PER critiqued, for instance, common views that it is the Romani “particular value system,” their “‘aggressive’ lack of knowledge of and respect for the law,” their “refusal to go to school,” and their “self-marginalization” that constitute the problem (1997b). PER also quotes official statements that state that the “Roma must walk [the path] themselves” (1992). Readers of NGO texts are clearly told about, and shown, the failure of the public institutions.

Integration: Do What Everyone Else Does

An essential element characterizing the movement for Roma rights is the need to gain public and political legitimacy, a goal that necessarily involves speaking the language of the game. In other words, successful NGOs must offer solutions toward fixing the Roma problem—and, in the context of the increasing popularity of the concept of integration (Fekete, 2008; Guild, Groenendijk, and Carrera, 2009; Penninx, Spencer, & Van Hear, 2008; van Noije, 2010), showing how the Roma can and do fit within the majority becomes a significant discursive route. As pointed out earlier (Bhabha, 2006; Said, 2006), resisting to current practices of discrimination entails not just sheer opposition, but also navigating existing constructs and definitions (of integration) and perhaps reclaiming them in a manner more true to Romani interests.

In the 1990s, advocacy started interrogating the choice between integration into mainstream societies and preserving group identity. PER described, for instance, how “the Roma face contradictory perspectives,” vacillating within the bounds of the assimilation-integration-emancipation triangle, between remaining apart from non-Roma societies, asserting differences and risking intolerance, having political visibility, or taking “the avenue of modernization and assimilation, that is, of altering the Romani identity in order to gain acceptance and equality in society” (1997a). By the mid-2000s, though, the discursive focus shifted to illustrate “numerous economic, social, and political challenges” (ERRC, 2003) still blocking the Roma from interethnic accord. A significant theme of the discourse was to highlight progresses in education (ERRC, 20002c, 2005c, 2006c; PER, 2001b) and housing (ERRC, 1999a, 2006c), successful human rights litigation, collaborations and trainings,⁶ legislative and policy changes, and, most broadly, thriving examples of Roma integration. In a sense, the advocates’ mission was to reframe Roma issues as collaborative integration.

Unlike dominant constructions visible, for instance, in the European press (Schneeweis, 2009, 2012), NGO texts were intent to construct knowledge about the interest that the Roma themselves take in integration into mainstream societies. Advocacy communication highlighted Roma leaders’ “consciousness-raising and community organization” (PER, 2003) and their eagerness to guide their communities toward a peaceful cohabitation with the non-Roma. ERRC recognized Ukrainian and Moldavian communities’ changing and complex leadership by Roma elders nurturing a desegregated community (1996b, 1997b).

Despite a focus on collaboration and successes—as well as on branding official efforts toward integration as assimilation (getting the Roma to do “what everyone else does;” PER, 1997a), consistent with the discourse of blame—what social integration specifically looks like remained vague. Whether a choice or a testimony of the geopolitical context, this absence of a direction and definition reflects larger problems with the concept of integration in itself—which typically means different things to different actors and often includes connotations of “assimilation, absorption, accommodation, acculturation and, more recently, community cohesion and adhesion to European values” (Sivanandan, 2008, p. 1).

Rights: Roma Rights Are Human Rights

Several issues characterize this mode of writing. First of all, pushing for (human and minority) rights is an expected objective of a movement working toward the elimination of discrimination; it is part of the genre of advocacy talk, in a sense. Second, this discourse works in conjunction with rights discourses characterizing other movements, such as the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) or the American Indian social movements). And third, the writing was as torn between universalist versus relativist tendencies as is human rights advocacy in general (Zechenter, 1997). Most often, the NGOs preferred—and recommended—a universalistic discourse, which informs Western-based ideals of human rights litigation in general (Clavier, 2000), to one that emphasizes the supremacy of tradition over rights: To illustrate, ERRC wrote, “Romani actors need to accept that ‘tradition’ is not a legitimate excuse (or explanation) to continue practices that may violate the rights of an individual or group within the community” (2005b). For these reasons, strong and clear phrasings that aim at influencing decision-making and social change are not surprising. The texts include scores of testimonials, court case transcripts, supporting evidence from official documents and the media, expressed in categorical statements, metaphors, and accompanied with photographic evidence of injuries, funerals, devastated homes, and the pain that follows racism. Such tools are linguistically and stylistically leading, without a doubt, and yet necessary in the argument for rights.

The NGOs construct a straightforward human rights argument by emphasizing the Roma’s humanity: “Whoever the Roma may be, Roma rights are human rights” (ERRC, 1999c). The texts pushed for stronger minority rights that must “draw on common roots and common perspectives beyond citizenship, group affiliation, or country of residence” (ERRC, 1997a). In the early 1990s, a first step was to establish the term “Roma” and to connect the problem of the Roma with other social movements, such as the African American civil rights movement and Zionism, in order to support and continue to inspire the new cause (“[R]acism is not only when you hate the Blacks in the United States, but also when you hate the Roma in Europe,” ERRC, 1998b).

ERRC’s work has been especially dedicated to human rights violations (the organization also offers legal services to Roma plaintiffs). Reports gave extensive evidence of mob and extremist violence, official violence, and police brutality (2005a)—associated with raids, excessive use of force (2000a), or torture and ill-treatment while in police custody (1996b, 1997c, 2000a), sometimes followed by unexplained deaths (2006b). Other human rights violations included illegal or unjustified property confiscations (1998c), racial profiling (2006c), interference within the family unit, and segregation of Romani children (2000c). ERRC further exposed official violence in legal systems, documenting court discrimination in cases of racial attacks and/or racial discrimination improperly investigated, delayed, or canceled (1996a). In this context, litigation successes were highlighted with enthusiasm.⁷

Ethno-Genesis: A Unifying Romani Identity

The discourse of ethno-genesis as formulated in NGO communication intends to construct and publicize knowledge of the Roma as a European minority, well organized and cohesive, and politically established. Even though advocacy recognized that “[t]he weakness of the Romani movement stems from the inability of Roma to articulate their own objectives” (PER, 2006a), the task to convince a majority public of the contrary has proven a challenge, largely because of reasons internal to the varied characteristics of the Romani groups continent-wide. Advocates’ construction of arguments toward a well-organized and cohesive ethnicity is complicated by the nature of the stateless and diverse Romani communities, which do not all consider themselves as part of a unified whole. For this reason, discursively demonstrating an “imagined Romani community” mirrors somewhat similar ambiguities found in discourses that characterized European states’ nation-building efforts in the 19th century (see Hobsbawm, 1990). Several themes contribute to this discourse.

A first theme refers to the construction of common terminology, to define and encompass Romani groups on the continent. In the early 1990s, ethno-genesis was about establishing “the Roma” and positioning the groups in a political conversation about minority rights. For this purpose, documents explained the use of “Rom” and “Roma.” By the 2000s, the term had become the recognized political correct term (albeit not universally accepted by all “Gypsy” groups). ERRC explains,

Leaving aside the non-Roma Gypsies, the Roma themselves do not (yet) make up a homogeneous ethnic group. Rather, the Roma today are a continuum of more or less related subgroups with complex, flexible, and multilevel identities, with sometimes strangely overlapping and confusing subgroup names. But in the last decade, as was noted, we have been witnessing a process of historic and political consolidation of a unifying Romani identity so that the name “Roma” has now become preferred by most international and national organizations dealing with various aspects of the “Roma problem” (ERRC, 2004c; emphasis added).

This passage illustrates the terminology theme, which culminates in celebrating the success of the movement to have established a common vocabulary. But this excerpt also demonstrates a second theme, attention to the diversity of the Romani communities, and a third theme, the uncertainties embedded in the project of constructing an ethnic identity. In regards to the latter, advocacy is hesitant when it comes to defining a Romani ethnic identity, as well as explicating who the “non-Roma Gypsies” are, since they are “left aside” from ethno-genesis. The question “Why Roma need unity” in the first place begs larger historical and sociopolitical dilemmas that the movement for Roma rights seems unprepared to answer—despite individual voices, such as the Roma National Congress’ advocacy for nationalism and one Roma nation, deemed by ERRC “for now an emotion, though a poorly-defined one” (2001e).

Further, in the quest for clarity PER asks, “Do the Roma want assimilation, integration, separation, or emancipation? If emancipation, do they seek emancipation as citizens, as a minority, or as a nation?” Other writers ask about the balance between tradition and modernization (“there is no way to combine traditional and modern leadership;” PER, 2002a), between cultural preservation and participation into mainstream societies, especially as they seek to serve and represent the Roma interests (a discursive direction closely related to the discourse of resistance, reviewed next). Again, ethno-genesis emerges as a necessary political goal, but a complicated advocacy task, especially in its effort to engage the voice of the Roma in the conversation, which typically is a more difficult project (see Hobsbawm, 1990). In this vein, ERRC’s questions since the 1990s are particularly telling of advocates’ attention to voice and representation. ERRC communication explained the necessity of giving the Roma a voice (1999a, 1999d), without trying to “to represent the views or priorities of . . . Roma” (1996a), and, at the same time, without seeking to simplify the task at hand: ERRC asked, “Who has the legitimacy to be the voice of the rank and file Roma, to represent their interests and to be also capable of tackling the issues affecting Roma in the European framework?” (2003c).

Yet repeatedly the two NGOs claim that there is a growing and increasingly visible Romani ethnic identity. Despite the diversity of the Roma and the challenge of the task, ERRC advocates clearly assert that the rise in discrimination in post-Communist societies and the growth of the movement for rights “undoubtedly fuel the construction and consolidation of a Romani ethnic identity and of a ‘nonterritorial Roma nation,’” in “a process of historic and political consolidation of a unifying Romani identity” (2004c; emphases added). In PER’s texts, the advocates call for “a united voice” (2002a).

Resistance: You Are a Gypsy

The discursive focus on resistance represents a struggle against assimilation and submission (ERRC, 1996b). Resistance for advocacy means several things. First, it refers to ethno-genesis with tradition and cultural distinction at its core. It also means protecting the community from too much non-Roma influence that may lead to assimilation, to becoming non-Roma, as PER explained in the early 1990s (“if Roma are educated, ‘they’re not Roma any more;’” PER, 1996a). Necessarily, traditional leaders are essential to safeguard the best interests of Romani communities (PER, 2002a). Further, the discourse thematically contrasts the Gadje (the non-Roma)—depicted as prejudicial, manipulative, and manipulatable (PER, 2000b, 2003)—to the Roma: “[T]o the Gadje the Roma remain Tsigan” (PER, 2002a; emphases in the original).

Whereas the discourse for rights pulls from a variety of other social movements to gain legitimacy and draw inspiration, resistance talk almost seeks to disavow itself from the connection to women’s rights in particular, largely because the affinity of tradition. As such, the rising activism for Roma women’s rights is depicted frequently as a distraction from work for the Roma as a whole. For the more traditional advocate, emancipation of women stands in direct contrast to the structure of the Roma family and community. Work for rights, therefore, should not be split in two movements that are incompatible, such voices suggest. To illustrate from one of ERRC’s texts, “To be clear and short, . . . in the eyes of the gadje you are not a girl or a woman first, you are a GYPSY” (2000a; capitalization emphasis in the original; the address belongs to a Rom responding to a Romni advocating for Roma women’s rights). Gender is thus minimized and deemed irrelevant in the context of Roma communities, in favor of emphasizing cultural, ethnic, and sometimes racial difference.

Conclusions: Representation and Resistance

This study described discursive strategies of two NGOs at the center of the movement for Roma rights, as constructed in 80 of their texts. It offered an inventory of six modes of representing the Roma for non-Roma political and other institutional audiences. The discourses identified here constitute a repertoire for advocacy communication for Roma rights. It was shown here that the two NGOs have depicted the Roma as victims of discrimination, largely by blaming the state and advocating for the groups’ human and minority rights; in the process, NGO writing has contributed to the articulation of an ethnic identity and of solutions to the Roma problem by working toward integration as well as by resisting assimilation. These discourses were less dependent on geopolitical contexts—that is, events or country-specific environments—but instead were more frequently connected to the voices employing them, to the type of advocacy voice speaking them (ranging from the more traditional to the more progressive). For instance, some advocates tend to agree with mainstream policies toward integration as a solution to the problem of the Roma, whereas others (more “traditional” voices) resist integration, deeming it a synonym for assimilation.

From the outset, this article laid out discourses to be imperfect representations, always complex, always ambivalent, wrought with fissures, and slippages (Bhabha, 1994, 2006; Said, 2006). This study presented here is, in essence, a glimpse into a movement that is possible because of such fissures in mainstream/non-Roma majority/dominant modes of talking. As such, the movement for Roma rights can be seen as resistance and a rupture within established constructions that depict the Roma/Gypsy as other, typically backward, perpetually problematic, a nuisance to states, and sometimes idealized as bohemian (nonetheless an other). At the same time, it is because of the same characteristic inherent in discursive talk, because of the incompleteness of discourses, that the NGOs’ work should not be interpreted as resistance in a strictly oppositional sense, but marked by real-world complexities (also see Tageldin, 2011). It was shown above that the two selected NGOs borrow from discourses of universal rights and other successful social movements. Yet, in a desire to protect the culture of the Roma, some advocacy also seeks to resist and stand against universal rights—largely due to historical precedents of what assimilation, eugenics, and sterilization policies have done to the culture. Likewise, some NGO advocacy seeks to speak for and represent the Roma, at the same time as other voices question their role in “authentic” representation; some argue for, and applaud, the existence of an ethnic identity, while others argue against it; some NGO work strives for integration, in writing and projects alike, as it simultaneously questions the concept and oftentimes labels it to be assimilation. In other words, the analysis suggests that advocacy communication is fraught with imperfections. Therefore, the representations of the Roma within advocacy are ambivalent—with the exception of the discourse of discrimination, which makes the most straightforward claim, never doubted, questioned, or challenged in advocacy texts. Yet such contradictions and challenges are to be expected, as they characterize a hegemonic system. The NGOs have no other choice at the moment but to leave some questions unanswered (also see Schneeweis, 2009). Their work is located at the intersection of conflicting forces and competing loyalties—for or against state polices, for or against the project of ethno-genesis, for or against Roma women’s rights, and so forth. And so the dance between such dynamics, pressures, and loyalties creates the fabric within which advocacy discourses exist as they do.

As a concluding remark, it is suggested that this conceptual ambivalence is necessary in order to navigate the different fields in which NGO communication circulates; and yet the unequivocal statements—that something must be done, that the Roma are clearly still discriminated against, and that the movement for their rights does positively contribute to the improvement of interethnic relations—are also necessary. On a practical note and based on the present analysis, this study suggests that the NGO voices cannot compete with other institutionalized ways of talking by being forceful—or they would be ignored, dismissed, and deemed angry or stubborn. At the same time, part of the advocacy challenge is the community’s own role in overcoming internalized racism (and the lure, habit, and advantages of illegal practices), none of which can occur in abstract or one before the other. As such, the discursive strategies delineated above have been (and continue to be) the necessary step toward social change, as slow and gradual as it may be. Future analysis needs to assess the efficacy of such communicative choices on the ground.

One of the questions asked here was whether advocacy communication for Roma rights reproduces dominant views of the Roma or resists them. In demonstrating that the majority of NGO discourses are ambivalent and hesitant, this article shows how the movement for Roma rights (through two of its most active organizations) complicates definitions of resistance. In this sense, it brings in the postcolonial approach on resistance closer to the communication field and draws attention to the intentional communication patterns within the genre of advocacy talk that are not just reactive or opposing, but rather mixing a repertoire of representations, invoking them at different moments by different voices—and thus gradually breaking down immutable (and stereotypical) constructions of Roma otherness. In other words, the work of advocacy for the Roma blurs the image of the Roma as it has been historically and predominantly depicted in contemporary Europe, and, in leaving the definition murky, NGOs offer an alternative state of being to the fixed representation of the other that has motivated and justified anti-Gypsyism. In the context of the Romani studies and social movements literature, this study concludes that the movement for Roma rights may be in need of clearer, stronger, and more defined organizational and political mobilization if it is to succeed in the model of other vibrant social movements (at least as regards definitions of integration and ethnic identity); and yet its ambivalent path is, for now, a necessary part of the process.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

This study was part of the author’s dissertation, which received the Ralph D. Casey Award for Outstanding Dissertation Proposal from the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication, in 2008.

Notes

Author Biography

Adina Schneeweis is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA. She specializes in international communication, ethnicity and race, visual communication, and analysis of institutional discourses. Her main research focus is on the construction of the Gypsy/Roma communities in the European press and within the activist movement for Roma rights, as well as in popular culture worldwide.

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