CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Oláh, Csaba |
|---|---|
| Title | We Evict You for Your Own Good: Political Discourse on Roma in Contemporary Hungary |
| Summary | The thesis focuses on how ethnic boundaries and a rather hierarchical relationship between Roma and ethnic Hungarians are being reinforced in the Hungarian political discourse. I analyze how an amendment of the housing decree in Miskolc led to the eviction of the Numbered Streets, a predominantly Roma neighborhood, and became one of the most important issues during the local election of October, 2014. I present the results of a content analysis I did on related articles that were published between May 8, 2014 and May 15, 2015, including the period of the political campaign. Beside the content analysis interviews with local civil and political representatives as well as secondary sources will be cited to give a picture about the different political positions and their interpretations on the evictions. I argue that the political discourse on Roma and Roma-related political categories that dominate the discourse significantly contribute to the depiction of Roma as a homogenous group of people who live at the margins of society, in “ghettos”, waiting for state interventions to change their situation for the better. This rather one-sided approach is also reproduced in policy making. Roma-related policies are often almost always formulated as if they served the need and demand of the Roma even in cases when they are not even consulted or involved in any stage of the decision-making process. Communicating the evictions as “racial desegregation” and justifying them by linking Roma and criminality in the political speech, can easily mask the different forms of institutional racism and strengthen the status quo of power relations between Roma and ethnic Hungarians. |
| Supervisor | Rabinowitz, Dan; Geva, Dorit |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/olah_csaba.pdf |
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