‘No smoke without fire’: Strategies of coping with stigmatised migrant identities

Abstract

This paper examines how ethnicity informs the ways in which Romanian migrants in the UK cope with stigmatisation. Instead of assuming ethnicity’s relevance, our purpose is to examine how responses to stigmatisation may or may not become ethnicised. We consider two strategies. The first strategy invokes and reinforces the salience of ethnicity, albeit in a negative and thus still stigmatised way. Instead of countering stigma with a positive reappraisal of ‘Romanianness’, some Romanians seek to transfer the stigma onto the ethnic Roma with whom they are frequently associated. This strategy thus acknowledges stigma, but attempts to detach it from the self and reattach it to the ethnicised other. The second strategy emphasises individual skills and accomplishments to overshadow the effects of a stigmatised ethnicity. Ethnicity is made less salient by this switch to a register of personal skill and worth. Exploring the interplay of these coping strategies, we highlight the fluctuating relevance, rather than declining relevance, of an ‘ethnic lens’ (Glick Schiller et al., 2006) in individual migrants’ de-stigmatising discourses and practices that produce, transform or at times elide different ethnic boundaries.

Everyday Cosmopolitanism in Representations of Europe among Young Romanians in Britain

“…Some of the participants of this study did indeed report everyday encounters with British people who expected them to 'look different'. As other studies have also shown (Morosanu and Fox, 2013), participants used strategies against such stigma. One of them was claiming a European identity, because it promotes a broader solidarity that includes Romanians.…”

“…This is because whiteness comes in shades and it is mediated by other markers of difference (McDowell, 2009). In the case of Romanians, they are often associated with the Roma gypsy (Morosanu and Fox, 2013), who are deeply racialized (Tileaga, 2006). This may explain why Romanians are often seen as outside the norm of European whiteness (see Fox, Morosanu and Szilassy, 2012).…”

“…This emphasis on individuality may also be rhetorically employed as a shield against nationality-based stigma (see Morosanu and Fox 2013). An example of this is given in the extract below:…”

Political Belonging and Fantasies of Inclusion. Romanians in London and Paris

“…While most of the literature on discrimination has focused on non-European immigrants in Europe, there is starting to be a large body of literature focusing on discrimination of Eastern Europeans in Western Europe (Scheibner and Morrison 2009) more generally, and Romanians in Europe (see Fox et al 2012, Moroşanu and Fox 2013, McMahon 2016, more particularly. This latter point is one also made in Gijsberts and McGinnity (2012)'s paper, but from the perspective of the destination country responses to new migrants.…”

Researching migrants’ diverse social relationships: From ethnic to cosmopolitan sociability?

“…Back (1996) provides ample evidence of the fragility of cross-ethnic friendships, and the more or less subtle ways in which they are tinged by racism. Individuals may combine enthusiasm towards some forms of difference with negative feelings towards others, illustrating the ambivalence of cosmopolitanism (Skrbiš and Woodward 2007;Moroşanu and Fox 2013 …”