Раса и роми: от „етническа дискриминация“ към расови режими в българското общество
Race and Roma: From “Ethnic Discrimination” to Racial Regimes in Bulgarian Society

Summary/Abstract: This article introduces theories of race to the study of “ethnic relations” in Bulgaria. Our starting point is that the dominance of the category of “the ethnic group” across the Bulgarian social sciences renders invisible and normalises the structural relations of power invested in the systemic exclusions of racialised groups such as “the Roma”. This “ethnic discourse” is unable to name and theorise power inequalities suffusing the social at both the macro-level of racial regimes and the micro-level of everyday interactions. Rather than imposing the notion of “race” on the Roma and Romani communities, we invoke concepts such as “racialisation”, “racial regimes”, and race as a “technology for structuring affect”. While balancing the perspective of Black Marxism, with its understanding of racism as the production of disposable life, against authors inspired by the affective turn, the article sets these two theoretical traditions in dialogue with a wealth of Bulgarian research on “the Roma”, such as on social inequalities, exclusion, and “integration”. We contend that race-theoretical approaches have the capacity to reinvigorate not just the scholarly, but also political debate in Bulgaria.

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