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.

Abstract:
This contribution analyzes continuity and change in the representations of Sinti and Roma used by the police in German-speaking countries over several centuries. Drawing on iconographic studies of visual antiziganism, it examines images produced by the police as an expression of a state securitization practice. Whereas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the threat of punishment and the exercise of state power was visualized as a spectacle directly within the image itself, this changed in the nineteenth century with the emergence of photography as a police technology. Between 1850 and 1937, a development can be traced from photographic experimentation to internationally standardized photographs of (suspected) criminals. This contribution concludes that the previously open threat of punishment against Sinti and Roma persisted in the more subtle form of criminalization and the threat of social exclusion that this entailed. It further shows that the state institutions used the images to portray themselves as powerful and strong, initially directly through displays of state power within the image itself and later through the exercise of the power to define how the images were framed.

Hinweis:
Dieser Aufsatz wurde durch Ciaran Cronin aus dem Deutschen übersetzt und ist ursprünglich publiziert worden unter dem Titel: Von der “Zigeunerwarntafel” zum Verbrecherbild. Eine historisierende Perspektive auf die Kriminalisierung von Sinti_ze und Rom_nja im deutschsprachigen Raum, in: Ruby, Sigrid / Krause, Anja (Hrsg.): Sicherheit und Differenz in historischer Perspektive, Bd. 10: Politiken der Sicherheit, Baden-Baden: Nomos 2022, S. 155–189, https://doi.org/10.5771/9783748925316-155.