Racism and Whiteness in an Anti-Roma Europe

Abstract

In my presentation, I am using the metaphor of “the permanent State of exception“ to discuss contemporary state politics that dehumanize the Roma. This metaphor allows me to centre the analysis on “the layered interconnectedness of political violence, racialization and the human“ (Weheliye, 2014, p. 1) within the domain of modern politics, and, in particular, to describe the construction of Roma as almost humans or non-humans. The social and political construction of the Roma bodies as “naturally prone to criminality“ hence, as a specific threat to the white order, have placed the Roma body as a body that needs to be constantly “integrated“, “corrected“, observed/controlled. In this regard, Antigypsyism is organised in the realm of “exception“ and the Roma are constructed as a threat to the state.