Public health measures instituted during the COVID-19 pandemic included both social distancing measures (including lockdowns), as well as personal hygiene measures (i.e., washing hands, wearing masks), with the purpose of preventing the spread of the virus. Using primary data obtained from stakeholder interviews, surveys, and desktop research from seven non-EU countries in Eastern Europe, this article shows how a new discursive fault line with hygiene as its core emerged across these countries in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, symbolically (and sometimes physically) separating the Roma from the non-Roma. Lockdowns reduced the ability of the Roma people to earn a living, due to the often-informal nature of their employment; as a result, many faced difficulties in covering basic living costs. These difficulties were compounded by poor living conditions, which limited the extent to which Roma people were able to follow social distancing rules and the measures regulating personal hygiene. All these factors were used to depict Roma communities as both lacking in personal hygiene and as wilfully non-compliant with public health rules. Public discourses emphasised the gap between the (self-perceived) clean and rule-observing non-Roma, and Roma communities, constructed as lacking in discipline and personal hygiene. These discourses, centred on hygiene, reinforced social boundaries and justified abuse and exclusion.

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Following the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns, heightened anti-Roma rhetoric became noticeable across much of Europe. This article focuses on the narrative according to which Roma communities represented a threat to public health and which will be analysed through the lens of the theoretical work on moral panics. The empirical data used in this paper was obtained in the framework of a project investigating the impact of the pandemic on Roma communities in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Ukraine, between March–June 2020. Using the literature on moral panics as a framework of interpretation, this article aims to shed light on the processes leading to high levels of social consensus as to the threat to public health posed by Roma communities in these countries. To do so, it outlines the narratives disseminated in mass media, as well as the subsequent narratives and policy responses employed by public authorities, showing how the latter legitimised the alarming reports publicised by the former, engendering a strong societal response which conformed with the framework of a moral panic.