Recycled (mis)representations: Gypsies, Travellers or Roma treated as objects, rarely subjects

Abstract

Outsider (mis)representations of Gypsies, Travellers or Roma, especially in populist newsprint and other media are analysed. Given the crisis in newspaper sales, there is greater incentive to create alarmist headlines and melodrama to enhance visibility and increase circulation. Traditionally valued in-depth journalism presupposes detailed enquiry, direct experience and face-to-face questioning. Ideally, the investigative journalist should not uncritically recycle hackneyed cliches. Yet pre-judgement dominates populist news coverage of Gypsies, Travellers and Roma. Centuries’ old stereotypes are recycled with minimum legal protection for the demonised minority. The exotic and macabre are regularly associated with nomadic peoples: perceived as evading hegemonic control. In contrast to other minorities, there is minimum tradition of ‘The book’ as ethnic testimony, encouraging literate skills in all domains. These are elaborated for knowledge access and survival alongside the dominant society. Such groups refine professional legal and political strategies creating specific niches and with expertise to challenge racism. By contrast, nomads have tended to use movement and invisibility for political/economic survival. Evasion and unpredictability have hitherto been creative, productive strategies. Select examples reveal continuing stereotypes and imagined practices projected onto Gypsies, Travellers and Roma, too often revealing minimal or indeed no contact with the peoples portrayed. Constructed examples include assertions that: Gypsies steal babies, are work-shy, and remain locked in some primitivised past, while feared as menacing invaders of others’ territory. Such media-enhanced examples are ripe for unravelling and problematisation, thanks to the anthropologist author’s extensive fieldwork, living among Gypsies, long-term ethnographic knowledge and research. Contradictions are exposed. There are contrasts between non-Gypsy hegemonic misrepresentations, indeed inventions, and the Gypsies’ own practices, their alternative values and positionality. Analysis is enhanced by an examination of the wider hegemonic context and changing or continuous anti-Gypsy political agendas.