The Invisibilization of Anti-Roma Racisms

Significant academic attention has been paid to anti-Roma racisms and their relationship to the processes and mechanisms of exclusion and marginalization. Significantly less effort has been directed at understanding how contemporary forms of anti-Roma racism differ from earlier ones, and why they are so difficult to challenge. Through a critical engagement with the works of David Theo Goldberg and Loїc Wacquant, the authors argue that processes of neoliberalization and securitization have contributed to the de-politicization of societal problems facing the Roma, and to the trend to ‘invisibilize’ the racializing dimensions of the marginal conditions under which many Roma live. Examples from Slovakia and the UK are used to articulate this trend, while also underscoring the importance of national context in delineating different outcomes and the extent of Roma separation.