While prejudice-reducing effects of positive intergroup contact have been amply evidenced (Hewstone & Swart, 2011;Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006), a growing body of research has demonstrated that such encounters participate in the reproduction of structural inequalities. Across different national contexts characterized by asymmetrical intergroup relations (e.g., Black South Africans, Palestinians in Israel, indigenous Maori in New Zealand, Latinos in the United States, Indigenous people in Mexico and Chile, Roma in Bulgaria, and Muslims in India), scholars have linked intergroup contact with reduced support for both equality principles (

Drawing on studies showing that arguments about the nature of intergroup prejudice allow members of privileged groups to ‘perform’ a positive social identity, the present study explores how arguments about the nature of prejudice are produced by targets of prejudice in order to consolidate or challenge their own social identity. We conducted interviews with Bulgarian Roma and, based on a discursive psychology approach, analysed the way participants contested being assigned to a Roma‐exclusive identity category, which they treated as produced by prejudiced beliefs of the non‐Roma high‐status majority population. Positive intergroup contact was used to demonstrate the absence of prejudice and counter Roma identity threat. Auto‐stereotyping and disidentification, in turn, revealed how one's own situation is distinguished from the group. We discuss how identity performances founded on prejudice constructions work to maintain or challenge intergroup boundaries. We conclude that studies revealing prejudice constructions of minority groups can explain the sedative effect of positive intergroup contact on ethnic activism and help to reflect on integration strategies that would be compatible with social change in favour of disadvantaged minority groups.