Communicating the Victim: Nongovernmental Organizations Advocacy Discourses for Roma Rights

Abstract

This article is a study of advocacy communication about the Roma (Gypsies) in contemporary Europe. A movement for Roma rights has emerged and solidified since the 1990s, marked by the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, rising neo‐fascist anti‐Roma discrimination, European Union enlargement, immigration policies, and moral panics. Based on in‐depth longitudinal and historical analyses, this study explains the discourse of victimization as constructed in nongovernmental organizations' (NGOs) communication materials. I suggest here that a vehement position against anti‐Roma discrimination is rather self‐explanatory in post‐World War II and post‐Communist Europe; but I also critique the role that NGO communication plays within structures that maintain an anti‐Roma system in place—by overly victimizing the Roma peoples.

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