Antigypsyism, education and the media: ways forward

ABSTRACT

This article is a self-reflection of my work over a decade of challenging school segregation of Roma across Europe. I look at how segregation has been framed and how communication around equality in education with the public took place. The education system is an important pillar in producing and reproducing antigypsyism in society. I see school segregation as an important mechanism that perpetuates antigypsyism. I explore ways to attract support for equality measures in education. One important strategy is to engage with media in transmitting messages to an audience that was usually not the target of inclusive discourses that promote diversity and equality as societal values.

KEYWORDS:

• Roma
• antigypsyism
• education
• school segregation
• media
• Europe

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Segregation is different from assigning children in the last row, as physical separation in the first instance significantly limits the socialisation of pupils during educational processes. In addition, assigning children in last rows has an individual aspect while school segregation requires a collective impact and was defined by courts an egregious form of discrimination.

2. Genevieve Siegel-Hawley (2012) How Non-Minority Students Also Benefit from Racially Diverse Schools, The National Coalition on School Diversity Brief No 8, October 2012.

3. I provide a larger analysis of antigypsyism and its impact on policies in my forthcoming book Ethnicity, Power and Inclusion: Why Policies towards Roma in Europe Are Failing (Rostas 2017). In addition to inferiority and deviance, antigypsyism incorporates other assumptions regarding Roma: orientalism, nomadism, rootlessness and backwardness.

4. For example, Michael Stewart says that ‘with the exception of Gypsy intellectuals who run the Romani political parties, the Rom do not have an ethnic identity’ (Stewart 1997, 28). Zoltan Barany also says that ‘Gypsy ethnic identity is weak’ but does not present proofs for his statement, preferring to cite Stewart (Barany 2002, 77). Leo Lucassen, Anne Marie Cottaar and Wim Willems have also denied the ethnic identity of Roma (Lucassen, Willems, and Cottaar 1998). Marek Jakoubek has repeatedly challenge the existence of Roma as an ethnic group (Brabenek 2005). Donors and higher education institutions which aim to build a Roma elite have ignored identity components of their programmes. Affirmative action in Romania’s secondary and tertiary education, Roma Versitas in Hungary or, until recently, Roma Access Programs at Central European University are just few examples.

5. The Programme of Community aid to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe – PHARE – was the main financial instrument of the pre-accession strategy for the countries which have applied for membership of the European Union.

6. The articles are available in Hungarian at http://24.hu/belfold/2015/05/06/labon-lojuk-magunkat-a-romak-elkulonitesevel/ and http://abcug.hu/ugy-probaljuk-segiteni-romakat-hogy-azt-sem-tudjuk-kik-azok/.

7. For details regarding the case, please see Chance for Children Foundation’s website http://www.cfcf.hu/en/ny%C3%ADregyh%C3%A1za-resegregation-case.