Press discourses on Roma in the UK, Finland and Hungary
Nira Yuval-Davisa, Viktor Varjúb, Miika Tervonenc, Jamie Hakimd and Mastoureh
FathieaSchool of Social Sciences, University of East London, London, UK; bInstitute of Regional

Studies, MTA KRTK (CERS of HAS), Pécs, Hungary; cDepartment of Social Research, University of
Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; dDepartment of Media Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich,
UK; eFaculty of Health and Social Sciences, Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, UK

Abstract
This article analyses the political and media discourses on Roma in Hungary,Finland and the UK, in relation to both the local Roma in these countries aswell as those who migrated from and to these countries following the fall ofcommunism in Central and Eastern Europe. To do so the authors have analysed
left of centre and right of centre major newspapers in these three countries,
focusing on specific case studies which were foci of public debates during thelast two decades. In addition they examined a common case study in 2013(‘Blond Maria’) that was discussed throughout Europe. The article examines
the constructions of Roma, both local and migrant, in each newspaper andhow these have changed over the period studied in this research. The
conclusion of the article examines the multi-layered processes of social andpolitical borderings which dominate discourses on Roma, ‘indigenous’ andmigrant, and the extent to which they constitute a coherent ‘European’construction of ‘the Roma’.
Key words: Roma, Hungary, Finland, UK, Bordering, press analysis
Introduction
In much of the literature on racism, colour and religion are constructed as themost important signifiers of racialization. And yet it is the Roma people whohave emerged repeatedly in various studies as the most stigmatized andracialized grouping in Europe (Aluas and Matei 1998; Levine-Rasky et al. 2014).
Following the expansion of the EU in 2004 and the inclusion of Romania andBulgaria in 2007, the diverse Roma groups can be seen as forming the largest

ethnic minority within EU boundaries (EERC 2010).1 This article analyses thepolitical and media discourses on both migrant and local Roma in Hungary,Finland and the UK, as illustrative of the range of histories and policies towhich Roma people have been subjected to in different parts of Europe.
As elsewhere in Europe, these countries have long-standing ethnic groupingsthat contemporarily come under the umbrella name of Roma.2 All these groups
have underwent histories of persecution and racialization, as well as post-war
policies ranging from forced assimilation and multicultural recognition. There
are an estimated 650,000 Roma (Bernát 2014) living in Hungary who are
diverse, but usually seen as composed of three main communities. The largest
is the Hungarian-speaking Romungro, while the Vlach (Oláh in Hungarian)speak Hungarian and Lovari, and the Beás/Boyash Hungarian and Romanian(Kemény 2000).3 In Finland, the Kaale Roma are conventionally estimated tonumber around 10,000 individuals, with an additional 3-4,000 living in Sweden
after migrating in the 1960s-80s (The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health2009). In the UK there are around 4-500,000 Roma (Brown et al. 2013:7). It is aheterogeneous population with different cultural identities and lifestyles. The
major older groupings are the Gypsies (British Roma), Irish Travellers, the ‘New
Age Travellers’.
In Finland and the UK, there has been a migration from Central and East
European Roma communities since the fall of the Soviet Union, with arrivals offirst asylum seekers, and later EU migrants. Despite the tiny size of the migrantgroups in Finland and in the UK, their arrival has reactivated anti-Gypsyist
phobia of racialised ‘nomads’4, and produced at times full-fledged moral
panics. In the UK, the immigration of Irish Travellers has also been a debatedissue. Meanwhile, in Hungary, the debates have dealt rather with theemigration of Roma, with conflicting explanatory narratives pointing either toproblems within the Roma communities, within the Hungarian society as awhole or to external actors such as the EU.
This article examines press discourses both in relation to the‘indigenous’ Roma and those who migrated from and to these countries
following the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe. In this, thearticle contributes to a growing body of literature on the situation of Roma incontemporary Europe (eg. Grill 2012; Picker 2013; Sigona and Trehan 2009;2

Ryder, Cemlyn and Acton 2014; Vitale and Legros 2011) as well as specificmedia and press studies (e.g. Bernáth and Messing 2013; Balch and Balanova
2014; Clark and Campbell 2000). The main focus of our analysis is on the ways
in which these press discourses on Roma have been used to constructbordering processes to differentiate between those who belong and those who
do not.
Methodology
The analysis in this article is embedded in the theoretical and methodologicalframework developed by the Work Package 9 team of the EUBorderscapes
project on situated intersectional everyday bordering (Yuval-Davis 2014; YuvalDavis, Wemyss and Cassidy 2017, forthcoming). Our point of departure is ashared understanding of borders – social, political, geographical - not as
territorial, static, naturalized, social and political ‘lines’, but rather as
continuous, dynamic and contested processes (eg. Brambilla 2015; Rajaram
and Grundy-Warr 2007). We further argue, that these bordering processes
need to be understood as grounded in differing social positionings. We havethus sought to combine the methodological tools of what Lesley McCall (2005)
calls inter-categorical and intra-categorical analyses, by exploring the shiftingand contested constructions of the categories of analysis across space, timeand normative political approaches.
We chose to apply these types of analyses to the press coverage ofRoma/bordering issues because the mass media continues to be a key site inwhich forms of knowledge struggle to achieve the status of ‘common
sense’(Gramsci 1971). As Emil Edenborg (2016) argues, the media, bycontrolling and constraining visibility of particular groupings in particular ways,
plays a crucial role in the construction, reproduction and contestation ofborders and boundaries in specific political projects of belonging.
We began the analysis with a preliminary examination of the press in the three
countries, focusing on several generic analytical categories reflecting theconstruction of Roma in the studied newspapers. These were: discourses,
categories and stereotypes used to describe and/or racialize the Roma; theextent to which all Roma were homogenized or differentiated into subcategories; and the ways in which they were positioned vis a vis other ethnic3

minorities as well as the hegemonic majority in the country. We were further
interested in whose voices were heard in the press discourses, and especiallythe extent to which Roma voices were included, if at all.
We analysed discourses on Roma in one left of centre and one right of centre
newspaper in each country, at particular moments of time during the last two
decades. In Hungary, the analysis focused on the left of centre Népszabadság(NSZ), and the right of centre Magyar Nemzet (MN), both daily newspapers. In
Finland, we analysed coverage in the largest circulation newspaper Helsingin
Sanomat (HS) and the evening tabloid Iltalehti (IL). 5 In the UK the newspapers
selected were The Guardian, a left of centre daily broadsheet and the right ofcentre The Sun, the largest circulation daily tabloid in Britain.
In each country, we measured the amount of yearly coverage of Roma
issues in the left of centre newspapers to identify ‘peaks’ of interest. The
stories that produced these peaks became the case studies in this article. We
also chose one common case study, ‘Blond Maria’, the girl seized by the police
in Greece in 2013 from Roma people on suspicion of kidnapping.
In Hungary, using the Parliament Library database, we found a total of2719 news items on Roma groups in NSZ. The items given the most coverage
were: (1) a housing issue relating to 13 Roma families in Székesfehérvár (in1997-98)6; (2) a news story relating to a number of Roma families’ migrationfrom Zámoly and their refugee claims in Strasbourg (2001)7; (3) coverage ofincreasing racism and attacks against Roma (2009)8.
In Finland we identified 965 relevant articles in HS. The three identified
peaks related to: (1) the arrival of Roma asylum seekers from Slovakia, Poland,
Latvia and Kosovo (1999-2000)9; (2) debates on Finnish Roma culture, initiatedby Roma activists and artists (2007)10; (3) debates on the circular EU-migrationof Roma from Romania and Bulgaria, and on a legislative initiative tocriminalize begging (2010-2012)11.
In the UK we identified more than 3000 articles in The Guardian12. The
identified peaks were: (1) the increase in Czech and Slovak Roma migration to
Dover in 199713; (2) the Conservative Party’s use of Roma issues in their 2005
election campaign which corresponded to a public campaign against ‘illegal’4Roma squatters initiated by The Sun14; (3) the highly publicized eviction of aRoma community from the land they owned in Dale Farm, Essex in 201115
Exceptionally we also added a fourth UK case study focused on theremarks that ex-Home Secretary David Blunkett made about the alleged
tension that Roma migrants were causing in Sheffield in 201316, as thishappened around the same time of the debate on the issue of ‘Blond Maria17.
In the following, we report our main findings regarding the constructionsof Roma, and how these have changed over the studied period. In the
concluding discussion we examine the multi-layered processes of social andpolitical borderings between the hegemonic majority and Roma, ‘indigenous’
and migrant, paying also attention to the extent to which we can observe a‘European’ construction of ‘the Roma’.
The Hungarian case study
Although most of the Roma in Hungary belong to three main linguistic andcultural groups, the press discourse homogenizes and racializes them into asingle subject. While stereotypes and discourses on Roma have been changing
over the period we analyzed, Roma remained a homogenous category in thepress coverage. The only significant difference made in the press between theRoma is either specifying where they live in Hungary or from which countries
they have migrated from and to.18
In 1997-98 the main Roma-related issue in the press was the so-called
Székesfehérvár story. The local government of Székesfehérvár decided todemolish a run-down blockhouse where Roma were living and move them into
container houses, then into cheap houses in the surrounding area of the city.
This policy encountered fierce opposition from a Roma civil-rights organisationand people living in the local neighbourhood. In the eventual solution, themayor agreed to settle the Roma in rented flats in the city rather thancontainer houses. Meanwhile, the local people prevented the settlement ofRoma families in the neighbouring villages.
The story of Zámoly19, which also began in 1997, became a hot issue inthe press in 2000. Roma families were forced to leave their rented
accommodation, which had been condemned by the local government as a5result of storm damage. They were first settled into public housing, thenmoved into other settlements and finally, several years later, the National
Roma Government20 built wooden houses for them in Zámoly. However, theevacuated Roma families did not want to move into these houses, because of
their fear of racism from the local population. Finally, led by a former local
Roma representative, the families migrated to Strasbourg and claimed politicalasylum.
Both of these cases focus on the issue of adequate social housing as wellas the racialized fear that local people have of the Roma moving into theirneighbourhoods. In both cases the main public debates were around who was
responsible for the issue, what caused it and who should provide the solution.
While MN blamed the Roma in these stories, NSZ focused on the solution. Thisdifference can be seen in the titles of the coverage.21 The rhetoric ofdiscrimination – with political context – was strong in the Zámoly case in 2001,
especially in NSZ, as a critique of the Orbán government’s Roma policy.
The analysis of the press during the peak in Roma coverage in 1998-99
reveals a contestation between a construction of Roma issues as part of‘standard’ social problems such as quality of life, housing problems,segregation and discrimination and a specific discourse focusing on ‘minority
rights’ for Roma. However, in relation to the latter, it was often argued that
the Roma are more privileged than other Hungarian ‘official’ minorities, oreven the hegemonic majority. This argument was iterated particularly in
relation to the Roma representation in the Hungarian Parliament, withconflicting arguments. In the NSZ, the ombudsman of minority rights (16February 2009) voiced concern over everyday racism towards the Roma. A
week later (25 February 2009) MN made an interview with the ombudsman,challenging his position: ‘Does defence of ethnic rights mean that only
minorities have rights? Does the majority of the society have ethnic rights?’
The ‘Anti-Ghetto Committee’22, established in 1989, is usually referred
to as the starting point of Roma self-organisation. During the following decade,a number of Roma politicians appearing in the public media faced accusations
that this was mainly a strategy to advance their political careers. The ‘careerbuilding’ stereotype was often cited, especially by the right wing newspaper in
the Zámoly migration (and the former Székesfehérvár housing) cases23, in
6

relation to the families’ leader, József Krasznai. He acted as a Roma
representative also in the Székesfehérvár housing issue. As the story became apolitical issue on a national level, several other Roma representatives became
involved and were subsequetly also vilified for it in the MN.
During the 2000s, the appearance of Roma people, leaders andpoliticians decreased significantly in the press. At the same time, there wereroutine referencing of Roma organisations and a number of former Roma
representatives in mainstream politics. However, by the end of 2000s,
discourses on the Roma had underwent a significant change. While there was astrengthening of radical right wing and incidences of lethal violence against theRoma, the media representation of the Roma became more heavily tinted by
racism and criminalization of the Roma24. The rhetoric of the two newspapers,
however, were quite divergent. While NSZ continued to problematize antiGypsyist racism and violence, MN constructed a racialized boundary of
belonging between Roma and Non Roma people in Hungary:‘There are two types of society in Hungary today. People in the first know the rules of living
together… The second society skipped the socialization, persons in it live on their instincts…most of
the members of the second society are Roma’ (MN, February 2, 2009).

Most of the press coverage on Roma relates to local Roma or, at times,
their emigration from Hungary to France, Canada and the UK.25 However, there
are some articles that relate to Roma also in other Central and East European
countries, discussing their migration to the West as a result of an all-European
racism against Roma.26
However, the case of ‘Blond Maria’ did not fall into this category. It
received little press in Hungary and when it was covered, the people involved
were described as Bulgarian as opposed to Roma or Bulgarian Roma.27
Overall, the discourse on Roma in the Hungarian press seems to be
directly connected to wider public debates and party- and governmental
politics. The stories about the Roma are often used to highlight the failed
general politics and/or Roma policies of the political party the newspaper
opposes, whether on the right or left of the political spectrum (although, as arule, NSZ’s discourses were more moderate than those of MN).28

7

Everyday Romani people’s voices are under-represented in the analyzed
articles. Most of the time they were represented by Roma local government
officials, human rights organizations and the minority ombudsman. There is aclear decline in the representation of Roma voices in the press. While in 1998,
the voice of at least one Roma is present in about half of the analysed articles,in 2009, it had decreased to about a quarter.
Roma groups are constructed, especially but not exclusively in the left
wing NSZ, as both part and outside of Hungarian national society. Theiremigration is viewed as an outcome of this racialized ambiguous belonging,both by the local Roma and by the hegemonic Hungarian collectivity. While
NSZ is more sympathetic to the plight of the Roma, and MN tends to discredit
their grievances, this perspective is shared by the two newspapers.

The Finnish case study
Throughout the analysed Finnish material, a consistent distinction is madebetween the national Roma minority and the Roma migrants from Eastern
Europe. The discourses on the former connect to a long history ofproblematizing the Finnish Roma as a domestic ‘other’, but also to theincreasingly sensitive rhetoric of modern minority politics (Tervonen 2012).
There are thus evident tensions and shifts in what can and should be written in
relation to the Finnish Roma, as exemplified by the rapid replacement of theethnonym mustalainen (‘Gypsy’) by romani (‘Roma’) in the 1990s.29 During the
public debates Finnish Roma culture in 2007, there is also a discernible
element of cautiousness in most of the writing in the IL and the HS. .30
Meanwhile, debates on the migrant Roma are connected to apoliticization of humanitarian and low-skilled immigration, and have clearer
continuities with old anti-gypsyist and racial discourses. A narrative of borders
threatened by unwanted newcomers is particularly clear in relation to themostly Slovakian asylum seekers who arrived in 1999-2000. Despite arecognition of discrimination and human rights violations31, they arenevertheless not considered as ‘real’ asylum seekers32. Both papers specify theRoma ethnicity of the migrants from the start, with IL evoking exoticizing
stereotypes of dark-eyed wanderers.33 In the substance of the editorials and8op-eds, there is no significant difference between the newspapers.34 A
hierarchy is built between ‘real’ asylum seekers and the ‘uncontrollable
torrent’ of arriving Roma, and the authorities are presented as ‘unable tomanage the situation’ because of overly liberal asylum laws.35 The migrants arepointed to as an argument for more restrictive asylum policy. Both IL and HS
voice support for the authorities’ urge for stricter legislation.36 When atemporary visa requirement on Slovakian citizens was imposed, this wastermed ‘inevitable’ by both papers37, and greeted by the IL as a ‘solution’ to‘the problem of Roma arriving to the country’.38
In comparison, the debate on the EU migrants and the begging ban in
2010-2012 brings to the surface more political contestation and critical
discussions. There is a division into ‘pro’ and ‘con’ editorials and columns, andcorresponding conceptualizations of the Roma migrants as either ‘victims’39 or‘criminals’. 40 The ‘victim’-perspective, representing the Roma migrants as
structurally discriminated against, recurs particularly in the HS41, andoccasionally in the IL.42 The EU is implicated; for example, an op-ed publishedin 2010 argues that “the Roma who flee from a vicious cycle of poverty are theflipside of the European integration process – an image of European poverty
painful to look at”.43 However, the conclusions drawn from the victimperspective vary, with the idea that “they should be helped in their homecountries” used to argue against inclusive policies in Finland.44
From 2012 onwards, the discourse on the ‘Roma beggar’ seems tobecome less ethnicized and lose some of its urgency. The volume of writing in
IL and HS decreases; in a number of articles the situation of EU migrants iswritten of as part of wider migration-related policy issues, concerning e.g.
access to health care45, homelessness46; or politics of free movement inEurope.47
There are no direct references to ‘race’ (rotu) in the studied texts, andlittle explicit references to anti-Roma stereotypes. The distinction between
domestic and foreign Roma means that there is no straightforward lumping
together of all Roma into one racialized group. However, within the maingroups written about, there is little internal differentiation. Particularly theasylum seekers are written about as a singular homogenous group,
constituting a ‘Roma problem’.48 Moreover, particularly in IL, ‘neutral’ news
9

items are frequently coupled with headlines, images and captions which play
more directly with racialized stereotypes. The Roma migrants are also
implicitly or explicitly associated with crime in almost a quarter of the IL
coverage studied. With no ethno-specific crime statistics, such implicit
association can be created for example by collapsing the categories ‘Roma’ and‘Romanian’, and presenting crime statistics on the latter to delegitimize theformer49 Meanwhile, unsubstantiated references to human smugglers and
Mafioso organizers of begging rings appear also in the HS.50
The most direct racial references occur in IL related to ‘Blond Maria’.
Between 18th and 26th October, a series of articles created a moral distinction
between dark-skinned child kidnappers on the one hand, and police, child careagents and Nordic parents of missing children on the other. IL’s piece on the
18th October (‘Has she been kidnapped from Scandinavia? A blond girl found ina Roma camp’) cites Greek police and portrays Maria’s host parents as
kidnappers and/or human traffickers.51
HS was more cautious and started publishing more on the case only
after evidence started mounting against the initial narrative of child-snatchingRoma. Still, also in HS there was a persistent ethnic framing of the reporting,with the Romani ethnicity of the host parents/kidnapping suspects mentioned
in every article on the issue.52
Overall, there is a consistent difference with regards to Finnish Romaand Eastern European Roma migrants in HS and IL. The Finnish Roma are givena relatively more positive and diffuse coverage. While NGO representatives
and ‘ordinary’ Finnish Roma are frequently given voice, Roma migrants areseen and discussed but seldom heard. The discourse is dominated byauthorities, with human rights NGOs as a countervoice.
IL and HS differ particularly in their approach to the migrant Roma, with
Iltalehti more prone to associate the migrants with crime and to play on
racialized stereotypes in its use of images and headlines. Still, both newspapers
seem to be characterised by a tendency towards surface-level ‘neutrality’ inavoiding expressly racialized language; while oscillating between ‘victim’ and‘criminal’ perspectives; and relying heavily on the authorities as a source of
information. To the extent that wider immigration dilemmas are discussed via

10the case of the Roma migrants, then, the discoursive ‘bordering out’ follows in
the Finnish case a distinctively governmental logic.53
The UK case study
The major finding from the UK data is the way in which different Roma groups
are homogenized in order to function as a sign onto which anxieties aroundperceived threats to the law abiding ‘British way of life’ are drawn, whether interms of anti-nomadism or in terms of the perceived threat of the European
Union to the UK’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. This projection isachieved through the deployment of a multiplicity of discourses such as
welfare, planning policies, cultural traditions, racial constructions and humanrights. These discourses change emphasis in relation to different case studies
but all relate in some way to an EU policy being introduced to the UK. The
overall effect is the ‘othering’ of these different Roma groups.
In 1997, the major discursive framework used to make sense of therecently arrived Roma in Dover is that of welfare. This is achieved through thepersistent use of three related discursive figures: the gypsy beggar, the welfare
scrounger and the bogus asylum seeker.54 The Sun constructs these figures in
its own voice whereas The Guardian critiques The Sun and other right wingnewspapers for doing so as part of its coverage.55 The policy background at theroot of the anxieties being projected onto the Roma in this news story, is the
Dublin Convention’s attempt to standardize asylum processes across the EU.
The Sun uses the terms Czech, East European56 and Gypsy57interchangeably
with homogenizing effect. The Guardian’s coverage constructs a pro-migration,
anti-racist reader/self.58 The ‘other’ is the sympathetically portrayed
persecuted Roma. This othering is softened somewhat by the inclusion ofquotes from Czech Roma teenagers.59 These quotes, however, often reinforce
racial stereotypes60. The self in The Sun is the hard working taxpayer who is
opposed to the ‘chancers’ and ‘con-merchant’ Gipsies [sic] who are falsely
claiming asylum in order not to work but to scrounge off the welfare state. In a
Sun political cartoon an alien representing Czech and Slovak Gipsies (sic) lands
at the foot of the white cliffs of Dover asking “Take me to your… benefits
office”.61

11

In 2005 the press discourse focuses on the legality of the traveller’s wayof life. Issues of public spending remain significant though are secondary to thelegal questions raised. The policy background to this story is the incorporationof the European Convention on Human Rights into British law. Both theConservative campaign and The Sun accuse the travellers of abusing the newlegislation.62 The Guardian uses its principles in the traveller’s defence.63
The Roma in this story are homogenized as an “invasion”64 or a “plague”
for example.65 At the same time an important distinction is made between the‘real’ ‘good’ Roma, living in authorised sites and ‘fake’ nomadic travellers.66
Exceptionally, the settled communities are aligned with the British self which,in The Sun, is described in various places as “law-abiding”67 “hard working
citizens”68, “peaceful”69 and as “tax-payers”.70 There are no ‘good’ Roma in The
Sun’s coverage of the other stories. The ‘bad’ Roma other is constructed asprivileged in comparison to the hard-working British tax-paying citizen,
exploiting as well as breaking the law71, benefiting from state services that‘ordinary’ citizens are not entitled to.72 Significantly many of the ‘bad’ Romaare identified as being of Irish origin, who escaped to the UK in order not tocomply with the caravan legislations there.
The Dale Farm story concerns a long-running legal debate over an Irish
Traveller community’s right to live in an encampment on land they had ownedfor 10 years but did not get planning permission to do so, as their site was seen
as a threat to the surrounding community. The Guardian’s coverage of theeviction was both nuanced, sympathetic in tone and included a range ofdifferent views including that of the travellers. Nevertheless it still deploys the
racially objectifying discourses historically associated with the right wing press,
primarily depicting Dale Farm as squalid.73 The Sun adopted a different
representational strategy, depicting Dale Farm as a site of both undeserved
privilege for the travellers that live there and as a drain on state resources.74
The Sheffield story focuses on the moral panic generated by David
Blunkett’s75 remarks which appeared to suggest that the worst imaginableoutcome of the easing of migration to the UK from Romania and Bulgaria is thearrival en masse of Roma from these countries76. Discursive frameworks of law
and welfare do not disappear entirely from this story but they are supersededby explicitly racialized discourses in both newspapers.
12

The Guardian does this in a contradictory fashion. While it published an
explicitly anti-racist feature,77 it also published an in-depth feature from theanti-Gypsyist perspective of a multi-ethnic vigilante group who police thestreets of Sheffield.78 The effect is a peculiarly racialized construction of asuper-diverse, yet still racist, British self, constructed against an homogenized,
potentially criminal Roma migrant Other. The Sun reproduces the same
discourses but includes even more crude racial stereotypes of the recent Roma
migrants. They are ‘filthy’79. They have ‘reputation for industrial-scale begging
and theft’.80 They also attempt to sell babies to multicultural shop owners.81
Interestingly, unlike in previous years, The Guardian offers no space for Romavoices while the Sun does include a Roma voice in its coverage.82 This patternrepeats itself also in the ‘blond Maria’ story.
In the UK coverage of the ‘blond Maria’, discourses of biologicalconstructions of race predominate almost entirely, focusing on hair colour andskin pigmentation.83 In The Sun, crude representations of Roma portray themas fairy tale villains, swarthy child snatchers who force children to dance formoney and enter into forced marriages.84 The Guardian’s coverage is morenuanced and reflexive, running a range of different types of feature on thestory, including an opinion piece by a self-identified blond Roma man.85
Despite the heavily racialized construction in both papers, they both also refer
to how economically and racially discriminated Roma are, The Guardian moreso than The Sun.86
In the main, then, The Guardian has tended to have more self-reflexive andmultidimensional coverage than The Sun. However, throughout this historicalperiod The Sun appeared to set the news agenda, with The Guardian often
reacting to it and other right wing tabloids. At the beginning of the period The
Guardian included more Roma voices in its coverage and was more
sympathetic to their situations than The Sun. In 2013 The Guardian allows
space for fewer Roma voices and produces more troublingly racialized
representations of Roma. The Sun consistently produces cruder racialstereotypes of different Roma groups throughout.
During this period two clear trends of change develop in Roma
representations across both newspapers. Firstly, different Roma groups are
frequently constructed as a sign onto which anxieties re EU policies that are13perceived as threatening Britain’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are
projected. Secondly, in the unfolding of this process, a multiplicity of
discourses the general trend has been a move towards a racialized
representation that assigns Roma groups a fixed inferior identity similar to the(post-)colonial representation of black and Asian people. As such, it is implied,they can never belong to British society.
Concluding discussion
This examination of discourses of both ‘left’ and ‘right’ main stream
newspapers in Hungary, Finland and the UK has clearly shown that Romapeople have been racialized and ‘othered’ in all three countries, although thehistorical specificity of each country means that these discourses areconstructed around differing policies, practices and everyday borderings.
An essential part of these racialized discourses is the process ofhomogenization. Although in the UK and Hungary the ‘indigenous’ Romabelong to more than one cultural and linguistic group, these differences do not
usually appear in the media narratives. While country of origin might bespecified, in Finland and the UK, the two countries with migrant Roma, theonly significant distinction made is between the local and the migrant Roma.
This duality overlaps with a more or less subtle distinction made between the‘good’ and the ‘bad’ (or ‘accepted’ and ‘problematic’) Roma, and works to
reproduce racialized discourses on the alleged criminality of the latter.
The discourses on the Roma are caught in the basic ambivalence of thepolitics of belonging which are applied, in somewhat different ways in different
countries, towards the local Roma. Even when constructed as part of thenational citizenship body, they are consistently framed as being apart. The
recognition of their ‘otherness’ operates both as a means of collective
empowerment and self-representation and as means of exclusion,
hierarchization and discrimination. In Hungary, we can see in the different casestudies the effects of the shifts in policies and practices towards the Roma
where, during the Soviet period, forced assimilation policies were enacted to
obliterate ethnic distinctiveness and mobile livelihoods. The post-Soviet
period saw the rise of self-representation and governance of Roma, but thesepolicies of collective recognition were placed in a socio-economic context of14

rising unemployment, collapsing public housing and rising racialized violence
that acted as a major factor pushing Hungarian Roma towards emigration as
well as transnational travel to Western countries.
In Finland, the press discourses reveal racialisation of the immigrantRoma, who appear overwhelmingly as anonymous and problematic ‘others’.
Meanwhile, belonging and citizenship of the members of the national Romaminority are rarely questioned, and the press discourses towards them arecharacterised by an increasing sensitivity and even cautiousness. Still, they are
persistently framed as ethnically distinctive ‘special cases’.
Racialization and othering in the UK have been operating in different
ways towards local and migrant Roma. The exclusionary discourses towards
the former are often connected to anti-Gypsyist stereotypes of dangerous‘nomads’. Unlike in Hungary and Finland where post-war transformations
forced Roma to find permanent housing, major sections of UK Roma continue
to live in mobile homes. Although British multicultural policies have been
aimed at migrants from the former empire,87 British traditions of patronage,
acceptance of and provision for different ways of life were applied also
towards the Roma, requiring local councils to provide official caravan sites
where Roma could collectively live. This provision was never sufficient in spaceand often lacked appropriate amenities of education and health and with the
neo-liberalization of the British state the legal space available to Roma became
progressively more scarce. Much of the debates in the press, as in the Dale
Farm case, focused on the criminalization of all those who could not or would
not live on these sites, including those who managed to buy private land andwanted to live there on their own terms.
The similarities as well as differences in the construction of everyday
borderings towards Roma in the three countries are expressed in the different
extent to which they participate in the public media discourses concerningthem. In Hungary, Roma voices are heard, but usually only those few who are
considered the official representatives of the Roma community, especiallyaround the period in which Hungary joined the EU and had to demonstrate apositive human rights record.88 In Finland, members of the national Romaminority frequently appear in texts concerning them; while the Roma migrants
are continuously discussed but rarely heard. In the UK, there is less15

differentiation in this sense between local and migrant Roma but the ratio of
their voices being allowed to be part of the media representation is the lowestof all.
An interesting difference between the ways Roma are racialized in the
different countries came to light in the case study of the ‘blond Maria’
examined in the press of all three countries. In Hungary the Bulgarian Roma
involved were constructed as Bulgarian seasonal workers. In Finland and evenmore so in the UK, the narratives of the press involved shift from a racialized
culturalist construction of the Roma into a biological one.
Overall, our case studies from three highly divergent contexts make it
clear that Roma are constructed as ‘Others’ in shifting and contested, yethighly persistent ways. While we found significant differences in discourses
towards ‘indigenous’ Roma and migrant Roma, these differences go hand inhand with the general direction in which constructions of social and politicalborderings have been developing in Europe towards Roma in recent years
which affect all Roma, migrant or not. These changes can be linked to moregeneral changes in European politics of belonging, the rise of ‘autochthonic’
constructions of belonging (Yuval-Davis 2011) and the neo-liberalization of therelationships between civil society and the state.
The racialization and criminalization of Roma migrants serve, however, also
another purpose. They have become a rhetoric and illustrative devise for thosein western European countries, and particularly in Britain, who fear freemovement of people within the expanded EU. The moral panics concerning
migrant Roma, as described in the press of all three countries, are closely
associated with the more general anxieties connected to westward mobilities
from Central and East Europe (as well as from the global South). In Finland andthe UK, the Roma are constructed as the most problematic or even dangerousof the Eastern European migrants. As a result, additional bordering practices
concern the attempts of non-Roma migrants from these countries todifferentiate themselves from the Roma so as not to be conflated with them.89
Most significantly, these migrations, as a result of the expansion of the EU andvital for its neo-liberal economy, have undermined the sense of closure andsecurity of ‘Fortress Europe’ and reinforced xenophobic movements all over16

Europe that refuse to recognize EU citizens as entitled to national welfare
provisions.
The most alarming – although not surprising – finding of ourcomparative study is that with time, the trajectories point towards increasing
racialization and criminalization, with more exclusion and less collective
recognition. The 2013 biological racialisation discourse of the ‘blond Maria’
case in Finland and the UK, unlike the more culturalist one used in most of thearticles discussing the Roma during this period, is a sobering reminder that
racialized discourses usually encompass, rather than simply substitute, earlier
hegemonic ones.
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1

While an estimate of 8-12 million Roma people in Europe is often cited (eg. Tanner 2005), other estimatesvary between 4-14 million, pointing to a substantial uncertainty about the category (Guild and Carrera 2013, 47).
2
As in the rest of the special issue we use the term Roma as a generic term while being aware of the multiple
and contested labels in which the subject of the analysis in this article are named by themselves and by others.
3This distinction is rare, however, both in the media and in the scientific literature.
4
We are using the term anti-gypsyism following the Special Report by R. Izsák (2015) for the Human Rights
Commission.
5
As is the case with all the largest newspapers in Finland, both Helsingin Sanomat and Iltalehti are politicallyindependent and formally non-aligned.
6
NSZ: 67 (38 news, 13 features, 1 letter, 15 op-ed)articles; MN: 19 (11 news, 3 op-ed, 5 features).
7
NSZ: 73 (57 news, 10 op-ed, 6 features); MN: 60 (36 news, 7 features, 4 letters, 13 op-ed).
8
NSZ: 126 (79 news, 27 features, 20 op-ed); MN: 72 (37 news, 2 letters, 14 features, 19 op-ed).

19

9

HS: 148 articles (82 news, 13 letters, 10 op-eds/editorials, 43 features). IL: 31 articles (21 news, 1 editorials, 4
letters, 5 features).
10
HS: 47 articles (17 news, 9 op-eds/editorials, 11 letters, 10 features). IL: 6 articles (3 news, 1 letter, 1
editorial, 1 features).
11
HS: 149 articles (77 news, 14 op-eds/editorials, 23 letters, 35 features). IL: 24 articles (19 news, 5 features).
12
The Nexis database used to find these articles cannot return more than 3000 search results.
13
The Guardian had 16 articles (10 news, 6 letters), The Sun 11 (7 news, 12 op-ed) .
14
The Guardian–24 (14 news, 1 letter, 7 op-ed, 2 features) The Sun – 64 articles (47 news, 4 letters, 12 op-ed)
15
The Guardian – 50 articles (33 news, 4 letters, 8 op-ed, 5 features). The Sun – 111 (90 news, 16 op-ed, 5features).
16
The Guardian – 11 articles (6 news, 5 op-ed). The Sun – 13 (9 news, 4 op-ed).
17
The articles which appeared in October 2013 relating to the ‘blond Maria’ story in the newspapers westudies in the three countries were: Hungary– no articles in MN; 3 in NSZ.
Finland: 13 in IL and 7 in HS. The UK: 12 in The Guardian (8 news, 4 op-ed); 23 in The Sun (22 news, 1 op-ed).
18
E.g. Roma from Mohács (and often from Miskolc) who often migrated to Canada, were identified as‘Canadian’ Roma.
19
Village in Hungary.
20‘National Roma Government’ was organised as an NGO, representing Roma on national level, the ‘official’
partner of the government in Roma issues.
21
MN: ‘Obsession of ‘Fehérvár’; NSZ: ‘Radio street: the story of a compromise’. November 29, 199722
It was established In February 1989, in Miskolc and is seen as ‘the starting point of Roma self-organisation
Roma civil right movement’ (NSZ,Februray 21, 2009)
23
E.g.:’…the behaviour of the leader of local minority government is very close to corruption…István Hell,
József Krasznai …and Aladár Horváth (Roma representatives) tried to make political capital unfairly in the
period of election.’ (by another former Roma representative:MN, January 10, 1998).
24 Cf. Bernáth and Messing 201325
e.g. ‘They came back’ MN, May 15, 200926
e.g. ‘Asylum seeking’NSZ, June 8, 200927
NSZ, short articles on the 22,23,25&26th of October, 201328
e.g. ‘French refugee status for Zámolyans’ NSZ, January 6, 2001 ‘Two politicians from the opposition (leftwing, MSZP) went to Strasbourg to meet with Roma migrants and discuss their main problems (to makepolitical benefit from the situation).’NSZ, March 14, 2001; ‘We should see how this campaign was organised:these people departed from a small village and arrived into the middle of the EU. It would be worth to ask:
Who paid for the whole action?’ MN, January 10, 2001
29
The word ‘mustalainen’ practically disappears in HS but appears occasionally in IL; e.g. in a story published
27 October 1999, IL refers to Romani culture throughout, but concludes that there are approximately 10,000‘mustalaista’ in Finland.
30
Yet, individual articles particularly in the IL portray Roma ‘cultural rules’ as a source of problems, alleged to30
cause difficulties in allocating public housing , family feuds and discrimination against women, for example. IL
August 25,2007; IL, January 10,200931
E.g. IL, July 2,1999; IL, July 5,1999; HS, June 30, 1999
32
IL, July 5,1999
33
E.g referring to the flights taken by the asylum seekers as ‘wandering’ or ‘nomadism’ (vaellus) Romanien
kansainvaellus, IL, July 5, 1999; or, to childlike migrants with ‘dark eyes’ and to the Emil Kusturica movie
Queen of the Gypsies; (IL, June 30, 1999).
34
Cf. IL July 7, 1999; HS, July 7, 1999.
35
Citation from HS July 7, 1999; compare to the article on the same day in IL.
36
The two newspaper use strikingly similar rhetoric derived from the authorities. According to the IL, “Theworld’s refugee problem is not solved by opening the borders of Finland; and it is doubtable whether those in
the biggest need of help ever even appear on our airports” (IL, July 5, 1999). Meanwhile, HS claims the “Lawhas to be changed quickly” and that “The loopholes in the present law do not serve anyone’s interests, least of
all of those in genuine need for an asylum. The welfare refugees enabled by the present law only stoke
xenophobia” (HS, July7 1999).
37
IL, July 7, 1999; HS, July 7,1999
38
IL, July7, 1999
39
E.g. HS December 7, 2009; IL July 9,2013.

20

40

E.g. IL, June 20,2011; HS, March 22, 2008.
An early example of this dominant narrative in HS is a story titled ”The Roma are victims above all ” (HS,January 14, 2008).
42
IL, July 9,2013.
43
HS, August 20, 201044
As stated by an MP interviewed by HS, December 21, 2010. Besides discrimination, a victim-perspective isevident in articles which consider the arrival of first the asylum seekers and later EU-migrants as a result of ahoax by organized criminals, who ‘tricked the Roma in order to make money’. Eg. IL, July 8, 1999; HS,November 27, 2009.
45
E.g. IL, March 18, 2014; HS, March 8, 2014.
46
E.g. HS, September 4, 2014.
47
E.g. HS May 24, 2014.
48
E.g. ’Roma problem’ solved by Visa restriction (IL, July 7, 1999); ’Roma problem’ requires European efforts(HS, October 12, 2010).
49
IL, June 20, 2011.
50
E.g. HS, March 22, 2008.
51
On October 19, IL shifted focus to Maria’s neglected state, praising the ‘safe children’s home’ she’s wasadmitted into. While the conditions provided by her host parents are described as “crammed and unhygienic”,
no worry is expressed for the children remaining in these conditions who were not blonde and blue-eyed. IL,
October 18, 19, 22,24, 25 & 26, 2013.
52
The same was true of the two subsequent Irish cases: the focus was on ethnicity rather than on poverty or
child welfare. In contrast to national reporting, HS and IL refered to “the Roma”, whether the context was
Ireland, Greece or Bulgaria.
53
E.g. HS, January 6, 2000
54
The Sun, October 21,1997; The Sun, October 24, 1997; The Guardian October 22, 1997.
55
22 October 1997.
56
22 October 1997.
57
28 October 1997.
58
22 October 1997; 25 October 1997.
59
13 November 1997.
60’Yes, we're noisier and more temperamental, but that's the way we were born. When I celebrate mybirthday, I like to drink and sing, but the Czechs find that hard to deal with.’ Arnost Kotlar, roma. (ref)61
23 October 1997
62
23October 2005
63
17 March2005.
64
The Sun, March 21,2005
65
The Sun, March 22, 2005
66
The Sun, March 10, 2005.
67
21 March 2005
68
14 March 2005
69
11 March 2005
70
19 March 2005.
71
11 March 2005
72
14 March 200573
‘On an island of gravel surrounded by a sea of mud, Michelle Sheridan closes her caravan door against the
stench of raw sewage and makes a cup of tea.’ (4 November).
74
26 September 2011.
75
A former Labour government minister76
Race row boiling in borderless Britain; LABOUR WARNS OF TENSION...”(17 November 2013 – 28 and 29)77
18 November 201378
16 November 201379
17 November 201380
30 December 201381
15 November 201382
17 November 201383
The Sun, October 23, 2013; The Guardian, October 21 2013
41

21

84

22 October 2013; 24 October 2013
26 October 2013
86
The Guardian, October 22-25, 2013; The Sun, October 24, 2013.
87
what used to be known as NCWP countries
88
For ways in which these formal voices have been challenged please see the article by Scott et al. in thisissue.
89
See the paper by Cassidy and Wemyss in this issue.
85

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