Peter Vermeersch

Reframing the Roma: EU Initiatives and the Politics of Reinterpretation

Since the accession of the A8 post-communist countries to the European Union, various EU institutions have regularly expressed deep concern about the precarious political, social and economic position of the Roma. This article examines the recent political reinterpretations that accompany the EUs framing of the Roma as a group in need of special attention. It argues that EU institutions will have to find ways to deal with the ambivalence inherent in their ‘European’ appeals for tackling the problems at hand. These calls may indeed—as, for example, the European Commission insists—enhance cooperation between different levels of government and persuade member-states to adopt new policies that will benefit Romani citizens. But, somewhat paradoxically, they also provide new discursive material for nationalist politicians with an anti-Romani agenda who try to minimise or evade their countries’ domestic responsibility by highlighting the role and responsibility of the EU. They also latch onto the alleged ‘Europeanness’ of the Roma in order to exclude them symbolically from their own national space and frame them not only as ‘Europeans’ but also as ‘outsiders’ and ‘cultural deviants’.

Ethnic minority identity and movement politics: The case of the Roma in the Czech Republic and Slovakia

The level of political mobilization among ethnic minorities in Central and Eastern Europe has often been regarded as directly dependent on the strong or weak ethnic identity of the groups involved. Less attention has gone to the role of ethnic leaders in creating ethnic group identities for political purposes. This article explores the influence of political mobilization on ethnic group formation in the case of the Roma (Gypsies) in the contemporary Czech and Slovak Republics. It examines the various ways in which Romani activists in these two countries have “framed” Romani identity. The article suggests that activists’ conceptions of Romani identity are closely tied to their political strategies. At the same time, Romani activists have not been able to gain complete control over the production of Romani identity. They have had to deal with powerful schemes of ethnic categorization promulgated by the media, public officials and policy documents.

Minority Policy in Central Europe: Exploring the Impact of the EU's Enlargement Strategy

They were able to set new rules and new legislation based on EU law and learned to implement it properly. Human rights were respected and minorities protected. Nothing within this process is self-evident but is a fantastic result of a human driving-force for reform, mainly driven forward by the enlargement perspective. (Verheugen 2002) Verheugen’s argument exemplifies a widely accepted view about the profound positive impact of the EU’s enlargement process on domestic governance in Central Europe. His reference to the protection of minorities in this context is not accidental. Many politicians and regional specialists alike believe that the process leading to the eastward enlargement of the EU helped engender new and better forms of national minority protection in post -communist countries (e.g., Rupnik 2000: 123-124). But, although assumptions like these seem quite plausible, they are often put forward without much further empirical investigation. Whilst the general effects of membership conditionality and monitoring by the European Commission are acknowledged by various studies, there is little research on the particular impact of conditions and negotiations on the specific policy area of minority protection. And thus new questions spring to mind. If the prospect of EU membership was an important factor in the field of national minority protection, in what direction, then, and to what extent did the EU shape domestic policy-making on national minorities in the candidate countries? And to what extent is the EU factor still visible in current policy plans? This article explores these questions by comparing the ways in which national minority policy developed in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. 1 In recent years these three countries introduced important changes in minority policy, although not always in the same direction. By examining the presence and role of references to the EU in policy formulation, this article will attempt to determine whether ‘EU-isation’ has been a major force driving changes in national minority policy; it will also explore possible other factors. The discussion starts with a brief overview of the minority situation in the three countries under consideration. It then proceeds with a short discussion of the EU’s enlargement strategy. The core of the article, section three, will chart the development of minority policy in the three countries. It will not be my purpose to offer a detailed historical overview; rather I will focus on what appear to be the most important driving forces in the domestic policy-making process. An analysis of official policy documents will allow to assess the role the EU factor has played in this development. 2

MARGINALITY, ADVOCACY, AND THE AMBIGUITIES OF MULTICULTURALISM: NOTES ON ROMANI ACTIVISM IN CENTRAL EUROPE

Activists who take up the cause of marginalized and discriminated cultural groups often find themselves in an ambiguous position in relation to the very people whose interests they seek to represent. Inspired by the ideas of multiculturalism, minority advocates turn the cultural identity of marginalized and discriminated minorities into the central focus of a political struggle for recognition. By so doing, however, they construct a particular sectional minority identity that not only fails to give full expression to individual identities, but is usually also “stigmatized” in the sense that it is popularly associated with standard stereotypical images and negative characteristics. This article identifies this ambiguity in contemporary projects of minority rights advocacy aimed at redressing the social and economic grievances of the Roma in Central Europe. It shows how activists in the articulation of their claims rely on essentialist assumptions of Romani identity. While these minority rights claims resonate well in international forums, they also run the risk of reifying cultural boundaries, stimulating thinking in ethnic collectives, reinforcing stereotypes, and hampering collective action. By reviewing some of the recent literature on multiculturalism in social and political theory, this article explores ways of dealing with this ambiguity. It concludes that minority advocacy for the Roma can avoid the tacit reproduction of essential identities by contesting the essentializing categorization schemes that lie at the heart of categorized oppression and by foregrounding the structural inequality that drives political mobilization.

Editors' Introduction. The Roma in the New EU: Policies, Frames and Everyday Experiences

This article introduces a set of articles that examine Romani mobilities in the context of contemporary European policies on migration and ethnic minority protection. The Roma are a unique case because their experiences of mobility are strongly affected by developments and debates in both these policy areas. Drawing on the expertise of a diverse and international group of social and political scientists, who consider the matter from various disciplinary and interdisciplinary backgrounds, this collection takes stock of two decades of Roma-related research in Europe. At the same time, it connects this work with wider scholarly debates in migration, citizenship, and minority and human rights studies.

A Minority at the Border: EU Enlargement and the Ukrainian Minority in Poland

This article examines the impact of the eastward enlargement of the European Union (EU) on the position of the Ukrainian minority in Poland. The enlargement process has set two conflicting developments into motion that both may have a serious influence on patterns of minority activism in countries at the peripheral borders of the enlarged EU. On one hand, there is a development toward increased protection of the external borders of the EU. On the other hand, a new trend has become perceptible within the EU toward increased political, security, economic, and cultural cooperation with the new neighboring countries in the east. Applying concepts from research on social movements and using statements by Ukrainian minority activists as the basis for an empirical analysis, this article explores how these two opposite developments have affected Ukrainian minority activism in Poland.

The Co-evolution of EU’s Eastern Enlargement and LGBT Politics: An Ever Gayer Union?

The EU identifies and presents itself as an organisation founded on ‘fundamental values’ and as a defender and guardian of fundamental rights. The development of this ‘fundamental rights myth’ (Journal of Common Market Studies 48(1):45–66, 2010) has taken place against the broader backdrop of a globalisation of human rights discourse (Journal of Common Market Studies 48(1):45–66, 2010; McGill Law Journal 49(4):951–968, 2004). Fundamental values have also increasingly become the narrative driving EU foreign policy, including enlargement and neighbourhood policies. As Article 3(5) clarifies, ‘In its relations with the wider world, the [European] Union shall uphold and promote its values and interests and contribute to the protection of its citizens. It shall contribute to […] the protection of human rights’. Article 49 sets forth respect for the so-called founding values—‘respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights’ (Art. 2 TEU)—as a precondition for EU membership.

Bosnia and Herzegovina: Thinking Beyond Institution-Building

This essay seeks to move beyond the traditional discussions on state change in Bosnia-Herzegovina by assessing the usefulness of shifting attention away from state- and institution-building efforts by domestic or international political elites and by focusing instead on the actions of local nonstate actors. We advocate a theoretical investigation into what might be gained from devoting new scholarly attention to identity-forming processes at the sidelines of governmental politics. We add empirical support to our argument by analyzing the work of a number of organizations in Bosnia that mobilize Bosnian citizens along nonethnic lines and construct alternative state-building narratives.

From Pride to Politics: Niche-Party Politics and LGBT Rights in Poland

In recent years, several post-communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe, among them Poland, have experienced rising levels of political homophobia (Graff 2010; Puhl 2006). Politicians have portrayed LGBT citizens as the ultimate ‘other’ and have threatened the rights and safety of their communities in order to win electoral support of the majority population. Such instrumental use of homophobia seems to work best in societies where homosexuality remains deep in the realm of the taboo. Russia’s laws against ‘homosexual propaganda’, adopted in 2013, are perhaps the most extreme manifestation of this phenomenon, but across Central and Eastern Europe, the past decade offers plentiful evidence of growing politicization of homosexuality: the indicators range from public opinion data to politicians’ rhetoric, to the bureaucratic hurdles encountered by LGBT activists in organizing Pride parades (Ayoub 2013, 2014; Buzogany 2008; Graff 2010; Kuhar and Takacs 2006; O’Dwyer and Schwartz 2010).

Changing Frames of Reconciliation: The Politics of Peace-Building in the former Yugoslavia

In this article, we examine reconciliation as a category of political practice. More particularly, we explore the ways in which the term reconciliation has been employed and invested with meaning in the recent legal, social, and political discussions on transitional justice and EU accession in the former Yugoslavia. Much of the literature on the former Yugoslavia highlights the need for reconciliation and envisages it as the ultimate goal of a process of societal and political transformation. But what does reconciliation mean? Our assertion is that reconciliation is a dynamic term; its meaning varies across discursive fields and according to the implicit assumptions associated with it. This article investigates a number of ways in which the term reconciliation has been given meaning in the former Yugoslavia through an exploratory analysis of three related fields of political discussion: (1) transitional justice, in particular the arena of discursive interaction surrounding the completion of the activities of the ICTY in The Hague; (2) the human rights and enlargement agenda of the EU; and (3) local and regional civil society initiatives, including the RECOM initiative, which calls for the establishment of a mechanism for truth-telling and reconciliation across all the countries of the former Yugoslavia. On the basis of an analysis of public statements by politicians and activists, as well as some interviews with key actors in these three fields, we show that reconciliation is mobilized in varying and often conflicting ways.