Communicating the Victim: Nongovernmental Organizations Advocacy Discourses for Roma Rights

Abstract

This article is a study of advocacy communication about the Roma (Gypsies) in contemporary Europe. A movement for Roma rights has emerged and solidified since the 1990s, marked by the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, rising neo-fascist anti-Roma discrimination, European Union enlargement, immigration policies, and moral panics. Based on in-depth longitudinal and historical analyses, this study explains the discourse of victimization as constructed in nongovernmental organizations' (NGOs) communication materials. I suggest here that a vehement position against anti-Roma discrimination is rather self-explanatory in post-World War II and post-Communist Europe; but I also critique the role that NGO communication plays within structures that maintain an anti-Roma system in place—by overly victimizing the Roma peoples.