The camp evictions and repatriation of Romanian Roma migrants from France that began in 2010 and still continue have been widely criticized. Petre Breazu and David Machin, of Örebro University, studied Romanian news coverage of the controversial camp evictions, carrying out a multimodal critical discourse analysis. The authors take a close look at three newspaper articles from a corpus of 71 stories from 2010-2013.

The analysis shows that the Romanian press recontextualizes the events to present the Roma as the cause of the failure for Romania to access Schengen and to acquire full EU membership. The articles show the French government’s actions as peaceful and consensual, and dissociate the Roma from their Romanian counterparts.

The coverage of Roma repatriations from France is unlikely to advance the integration of Roma people, Breazu and Machin conclude. In the texts, the researchers identify so-called ‘new racism’, as Roma are depicted as out of synch with wider social norms.

The article “A critical multimodal analysis of the Romanian press coverage of camp evictions and deportations of the Roma migrants from France” was published in Discourse & Communication and is available on the publisher’s website (free abstract).

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