Abstract
In this article, we address a gap in the scholarship on (super)diversity, discrimination and racism by placing the experiences of non-western migrants and Roma people in the same conceptual framework of stigmatization based on racialization and aporophobia. Including a (formally non-recognized) national minority, the Spanish Roma, in such an analysis implies moving from a framework of superdiversity applied to immigrants to a broader one, which also applies the notion of superdiversity to the racialized citizens of a country, shifting the focus from inner-group features to exogenous othering processes by the mainstream society. We aim to also contribute to the literature on the race–class binary with our empirically grounded analysis of how racialization and aporophobia intersect in the negative stereotyping of people who are cast as outsiders based on both their race/ethnicity and (assumed) socio-economic status. Data from several different research projects on migrant and Roma inclusion/exclusion in Spain were used for the analysis, which focuses on the intersections between race and class in the narratives on exclusion and discrimination by 185 migrant and Roma men and women that were interviewed between 2004 and 2021. The analysis shows that our Roma and migrant respondents perceive forms of discrimination based on racialization and aporophobia that are similar in several ways. In turn, the “double stigmatization” experienced by many of our respondents reinforces their actual precariousness, which may be understood both as a cause and consequence of this stigmatization. We found that these experiences were salient in the narratives of both non-western migrant and Roma respondents who find themselves part of a “racialized underclass” and struggle with finding ways to exit the vicious circle of devalued identities and material deprivation.
Highlights
After having studied different forms of inclusion/exclusion and perceived discrimination among migrants in Catalonia/Spain for nearly two decades, in recent years, we expanded our focus to include the native Roma population1
This article has intended to fill a gap in the literature ondiversity, discrimination and racism by including migrants and racialized citizens in the same conceptual framework, and adding the concept of aporophobia to the analysis of the stigmatization of racialized others
We have applied an intersectional approach in order to provide an empirically grounded contribution to develop the underexplored relations between racialization and aporophobia, complementary to the vast scholarship on race and class
Summary
After having studied different forms of inclusion/exclusion and perceived discrimination among migrants in Catalonia/Spain for nearly two decades, in recent years, we expanded our focus to include the native Roma population. We found striking similarities between the Roma and the non-western migrant respondents in terms of both experiences of ethno-racially based forms of rejection, and of mistreatment based on being, or being assumed to be, poor These narratives constitute the empirical basis for the analysis on intersecting discriminations that we will develop in this article, conceptualized as racialization and aporophobia (i.e., rejection of the poor; see Cortina Orts 2017). We aim to advance the analysis of discrimination and disadvantage in “superdiverse” (Vertovec 2007) societies by placing the Spanish Roma people and non-western migrants in the same conceptual framework of stigmatization based on racialization and aporophobia. We argue that in order to conceptualize the exclusion and discrimination that Roma people and non-western migrants are subject to, an intersectional approach taking into account the dimensions of race/ethnicity and class is necessary. We will describe our ethnographic data material, and analyze this along the lines of racialization/aporophobia and their intersections
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