Escaping the labyrinth of Roma political representation.
Escaping the labyrinth of Roma political representation.

Reflections on common citizenship

Summary/Abstract: The paper reconstructs the genesis of contemporary debates on Roma rights in Europe, from the early 1990s up to now. It focuses on official documents and key experts’ opinions, within the context of the fall of State-Socialism and the consequent Europeanization of Human Rights. The assemblage of texts analyzed here constitutes a complex field that embraces a multiplicity of institutions, individuals and discourses. In this field, texts are principle instruments of influencing and ruling politics, and they crystalize a complex process of policy institutionalization. By doing institutional discourse analysis, this paper examines the genesis of EU Roma policies pointing out two core antinomies: a) the ethnicity blind liberal concept of individual emancipation has proved to reproduce interethnic inequality, due to its incapacity to counter deeply rooted antigypsyism as a mechanism of social exclusion. b) The ethno-communitarian concept of collective emancipation has revealed the limits of civic initiatives based on NGO-networks, while power differentials in democratic elected bodies and public institutions continue to be unaddressed. To overcome such antinomies, the paper explores different political scenarios, to enable pathways for Roma equality by enacting processes of common citizenship.

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