Der vorliegende Studienreport dokumentiert eine qualitative Studie zur Rezeption medialer Antiziganismen. Ziel der Untersuchung war es zu rekonstruieren, wie unterschiedliche Akteursgruppen – darunter von Antiziganismus betroffene Personen sowie wei-tere gesellschaftliche Akteur*innen – mediale Inhalte wahrnehmen, interpretieren und bewerten. Methodisch basiert die Studie auf einem qualitativen Forschungsdesign mit narrativ-biographischen Interviews und Gruppendiskussionen, die auf Grundlage der reflexiven Grounded Theory sinnrekonstruktiv ausgewertet wurden. Der analytische Fokus liegt auf der Rekonstruktion von Deutungsmustern und kollektiven Sinnbildungsprozessen, die die Rezeption medialer Darstellungen strukturieren, sowie auf der Analyse von medialem Diskriminierungserleben und der empirischen Explikation von widerständigen Strategien gegen medialen Antiziganismus. Die Studie leistet damit einen Beitrag zum Verständnis der Bedeutung von Medien für die Tradierung von und den Aktivismus gegen Antiziganismus und die Herausforderungen und Ambivalenzen, die mit medialen Selbstrepräsentationen einher gehen. Weiter unterstreicht sie die Relevanz einer qualitativen Rezeptionsfor-schung für die Antiziganismusforschung sowie für Debatten über mediale Diskriminierung, Repräsentation und Voicing und die gesellschaftliche Teilhabe marginalisierter Gruppen.

Abstract:
This paper examines how museological curation, understood as a historically contingent regime of knowledge production, mediates the racialization of Roma identity through the “Indian origin” theory. Focusing on the Museum of Romani Culture, a state-subsidized organization, Czech Republic (MRC), and its permanent exhibition The Story of the Roma, I analyze how the chronicling, mapping, and visual narration of the Roma’s putative Indian heritage are shaped by the intertwined histories of Czech nationalism, racialized whiteness, and minority governance. While Critical Romani Studies has traced the genealogy of the “Indian origin” trope across philological, ethnographic, and later serological and genetic paradigms, its musealization has remained largely unexamined. I argue that the MRC’s curatorial voice simultaneously reproduces colonial epistemes and stages the Roma as both internal European minorities and externalized, civilizational “others.” Drawing on critical race theory, scholarship on musealization and racialization, and raciolinguistics, the paper shows how museum practices rearticulate Roma identity through Orientalist genealogies while displacing the epistemic violence embedded in these frameworks.

Abstract:

Scientific research has often contributed to racist patterns and reproduced racism against Roma* (In this chapter, racism against Roma or anti-Roma racism is used to refer to racist actions, thought patterns and experiences. The term antigypsyism is used with reference to the academic category of analysis, which reveal stigmatizing patterns of interpretation and mechanisms that make Sinti and Roma “others” (cf. End, 2012, p. 28f).) in the last centuries and still does today. Reputedly, knowledge had been marked as scientifically consolidated and had been used to legitimate societal exclusion and persecution of Sinti* and Roma* (In this chapter, the gendered terms Roma* and Sinti* are used due to gender-fair and inclusive language.) in Germany (cf., e.g., Benz, Sinti und Roma: Die unerwünschte Minderheit. Über das Vorurteil Antiziganismus. Metropol, 2014; End et al., Antiziganistische Zustände: Zur Kritik eines allgegenwärtigen Ressentiments. Unrast Verlag, 2009; Fings, Sinti und Roma. Geschichte einer Minderheit. C.H. Beck, 2019; Messerschmidt, Rassismus, Antisemitismus und Antiziganismus in der postnationalsozialistischen Gesellschaft. Belz Juventa, 2021; Reuss, Kontinuitäten der Stigmatisierung: Sinti und Roma in der deutschen Nachkriegszeit. Metropol, 2015; Winckel, Antiziganismus: Rassismus gegen Roma und Sinti im vereinigten Deutschland. Unrast, 2002). It is therefore important to question how knowledge is produced, who produces knowledge, and which knowledge is recited. On the basis of a realized research study in Germany, this chapter focuses on how researchers could contribute to combat racism against Roma* by critically being aware of knowledge production, by focusing on deconstructive discourses and reconstructive research approaches.

Abstract:

This chapter explores how the concept of “Racial Capitalism” can be applied to the phenomenon of antigypsyism. The concept focuses on the intersections between racism, capitalism, and social exclusion, and was developed, among others, by Cedric Robinson and Stuart Hall. It has been increasingly discussed in recent years by social theorists, including Étienne Balibar, Immanuel Wallerstein, Gargi Bhattacharyya, Nancy Fraser, and Satnam Virdee. I analyze these authors’ theories and ask whether they provide a basis for a critique of the racism directed against Roma. I argue that, as the “Racial Capitalism” concept is helpful in understanding the impacts of racism on the working and living conditions of Roma, Critical Romani Studies may benefit from adopting it. However, it offers little guidance for research into antigypsyism. This is because the concept focuses on the effects of racism, while the social conditions that give rise to and enable racism remain as much under-exposed as the particular features of various forms of racist thinking. Although a materialist approach, it lacks important materialist methods that are necessary for criticizing antigypsyism, such as tracing racist desires back to the capitalist form of social relations, critically evaluating bourgeois social norms, and explaining the psychological appeal of ideologies of essential inequality.

Abstract:

Since the fifteenth century, European-dominant culture has developed an iconography around the figure of the “gypsy,” which has proved durable and adaptable to modern technology. From the postcards of the early twentieth century to contemporary TV series, this symbolic figure has remained a steadfast construction of collective memory. It has served as a surface for projecting the fears and longings of the dominant culture, as an anti-norm to what was perceived to be bourgeois, that is, white, society. Based on the theoretical framework for the analysis of “gypsy-themed” films elaborated by Radmila Mladenova in her book The “White” Mask and the “Gypsy” Mask in Film (2022), this chapter asks to what extent the series Peaky Blinders does (or does not) reproduce and perpetuate antigypsyist stereotypes. The aim of the chapter is to lay out how the “gypsy mask” manifests in the series through and within its characters, costumes, and plot.

Abstract:

Based on Miles’ thesis regarding institutional racism that “other words carry the original meaning,” this paper aims at analyzing modes and functions of racialized knowledge in police antigypsyism. To achieve this, it tracks the development of antigypsyist police terminology from openly racist slurs via more codified wording and finally focuses on the use of modi operandi. It argues that those modi operandi play a key role in contemporary antigypsyist police knowledge as they allow police institutions in democratic societies to uphold antigypsyist concepts without explicitly mentioning an ethnic group even though the congruence of terminology and racialized meaning is blurred. To conclude, it analyzes how academic criminological works contribute to the upholding and refining of this antigypsyist knowledge by functioning as an echo chamber for police perspectives on those perceived as ‘gypsies.’

Abstract:

This article examines ethicized discourses and the institutional exclusion of racialized EU migrants, focusing on a German city. Drawing on detailed microsociological analyses of communicative practices and administrative routines, it demonstrates how antigypsyist ideas persist despite changes in language, manifesting in indirect and coded forms within public and bureaucratic communication. The study identifies an organizational culture within the municipal administration characterized by deliberate obstacles to the social inclusion of so-called “poverty migrants.” The role of social welfare authorities is highlighted, employing criminalizing concepts such as “organized welfare fraud,” alongside techniques akin to predictive policing, targeting racialized EU migrants. The research illustrates how institutional practices and stereotypical knowledge intersect to reproduce systemic disadvantage. The findings underline the necessity of a structural perspective for critical engagement with and the dismantling of institutional racism against Roma.