Annabel Claire Tremlett

Making a difference without creating a difference: Super-diversity as a new direction for research on Roma minorities

Academic and policy discourses recognise the diversity of Roma minorities, frequently using the word ‘Roma’ as an umbrella term that is meant to capture the inherent plurality of such populations. However, ‘heterogeneity’ can still prove to be an inadequate approach to diversity, as it categorises people and still positions them on an essentialising template of what it is to be ‘Roma’, which can discount their linguistic, cultural, socio-economic and identification hybridities, or ‘super-diversity’. ‘Super-diversity’ is a relatively new concept that is seen as a way to better represent the types of diversities that are normal amongst contemporary populations. This article looks at the trajectory of research on Roma minorities and examines the opportunities and challenges for using super-diversity as a way of articulating a new direction.

‘Here are the Gypsies!’ The importance of self-representations and how to question prominent images of Gypsy minorities

Abstract Gypsy, Roma or traveller minorities remain a group that is still homogenized as the ‘other’1. The European imagination continues to be entrenched in the spectacle of their difference – images of weddings, musicians, funerals and fights are fascinating and are thus prioritized. But what would happen if the cameras were given to these people themselves? What if they became the image-makers? This article examines how ethnic studies might contribute to breaking the mould of the exoticized Gypsy through self-representations. The study here formed part of an ethnographic project among primary school pupils in Hungary. Using the photo elicitation method, children were given disposable cameras producing 451 photographs that then formed the basis of interviews. The results reveal very few indicators that could be described as significantly or distinctively divided into ‘Gypsy’ or ‘non-Gypsy’ identifications, questioning the status of difference in discourses around such minorities.

Demotic or demonic? Race, class and gender in ‘Gypsy’ reality TV

An intriguing shift in the public interest of Roma, Gypsy and Traveller minorities has been the rise of the ‘Gypsy’ reality TV star in shows across Europe (‘Gypsy’ is the word most often used in popular media culture). The latest phenomenon to hit the UK has been the Channel 4 series Big Fat Gypsy Weddings (Firecracker Films, Channel 4, 2010–2013), a flamboyant production that has garnered both huge audience shares and fierce criticism, with commentators berating its narrow, sensationalist focus. Drawing on both specialized literature on Roma minorities and current sociological debates on reality TV formats, this article raises questions about how the politics of the ‘demotic turn’ of such formats (as noted by Turner in 2004) can lean towards the demonic through emphasizing such groups as spectacular, extraordinary and above all, negatively different. Furthermore, this article shows how the series not only reproduces old stereotypes of Gypsies and Travellers as different, ethnicized others but is also heavily embroiled in UK gender and class discourses. Whilst the series claims to be a unique insight into a marginalized community, this close analysis discusses the wider politics within which it is embedded and how such representations can both popularize and undermine marginalized or minority groups.

Visualising everyday ethnicity: moving beyond stereotypes of Roma minorities

ABSTRACT The visual image of Roma people in the media is mired in racialised notions of ‘the other’. Whilst we know what Roma stereotypes look like, there is little clarity as to how a ‘non-stereotypical’ image might be constructed. In order to examine the non-stereotypical, two sources of images are analysed: (1) entrants from an anti-stereotype Roma photography competition and (2) self-representations produced by Roma participants during ethnographic research. The findings show that if ‘Roma’ is foregrounded as the subject, even a non-stereotypical approach can reproduce ‘difference’ (from a supposed ‘norm’). ‘Roma’ is thus, at the moment, still strongly linked to a notion of ethnicity that is seen as different and racialised. However, when ethnicity is not emphasised, but rather self-representations and the ‘everyday’, such orthodoxies are challenged. These sources provide a unique opportunity to create a deeper understanding of ‘non-stereotypical’ images in order to challenge misrepresentations and racism.

The entertaining enemy: ‘Gypsy’ in popular culture in an age of securitization

This chapter explores the relationship between popular culture and discourses of securitization by examining the trend of ‘the Gypsy’ in reality television. Notions such as ‘suspect communities’, people as ‘existential threats’ and the need for ‘exceptional measures’ are all concepts used in securitization studies and are also circulated in popular television shows that include Roma minorities. The conflation of ‘security threat’ with the ‘entertaining’ Gypsy characters in such shows highlights the particular mode of securitization used in current popular culture output. This chapter shows how the logic of security can be used to ‘sell’ popular representations of the Roma, revealing the system of beliefs about ‘the Gypsy’ as an entertaining enemy perpetuated by this political economy at a time of securitization.

Romaphobia and the media: mechanisms of power and the politics of representations

ABSTRACT This special issue of Identities, entitled ‘Romaphobia and the media’, examines entrenched and ongoing media coverage of Roma, Gypsy and Traveller people across Europe. The focus is on how the media problematises the Roma, how it constructs a ‘conceptual map’ about Roma people and what this tells us about the societies we live in. This special issue includes five academic articles all examining the constructions and stereotypes used in the media in various formats and European countries. After these academic articles, this special issue then deviates from the normal journal structure by including three commentary pieces from professionals from varying Roma backgrounds to give their views and experiences on how they tackle Romaphobia and the media. The inclusion of these commentary pieces are very powerful in offering a perspective of active interventions and resistance that we should not forget amidst the depressing continued circulation of racialised stereotypes.