A Bottom-Up Approach to the Roma Inclusion in Europe

CMECIU Camelia1

1 Faculty of Journalism and Communication Studies, University of Bucharest (ROMANIA)

camellia.cmeciu@fjsc.ro

 

Abstract

Since many of the top-down approaches to the sensitive issue of Roma inclusion seem to have failed, the debates on EU platforms have been very heated. One such platform which has brought up this issue is ‘Debating Europe’ platform. Two main debates have been launched since 2011 on ways to the Roma community inclusion: ways to tackle unemployment (54 comments) and ways to end Roma poverty and exclusion (209 comments). Starting from the theory on (de)legitimation strategies and using QDA miner for the content analysis, I will provide insights into the feature categories specific to the (de)legitimating groups, and into the types of communication strategies used by the debate participants to (de)legitimate EU, member states’ and Roma community’s measures to the Roma inclusion issue.

 

1. Introduction

Public or private organizations should take into account the paradigmatic shift brought by the online environment: from B2C (business-to-consumer) monologues to B2C2B (business-to-consumer-to-business) dialogues up to C2C (consumer-to-consumer) discussions [1]. This shift is consistent with the one important finding highlighted in the European Communication Monitor [2], namely that digital natives are more interactive, are more involved in communication, demand more feedback and are more critical. This empowerment of consumers, clients and/or citizens as prosumers of information or as (de)legitimators of organizations may be noticed within the dialogic communication of national, European and international public organizations as well. In order to close the gap between the EU institutions and citizens, there have been launched various online platforms whose main role is to provide a ‘bottom-up’ approach to various European issues. Such a platform is Debating Europe, which was launched in 2011 and has Friends of Europe and Europe’s World as founding partners [3]. The working principles of this EU platform are the following[4]: EU citizens may leave comments under a debate or even suggest a new debate on a topic that has to do with Europe, the platform managers arrange interviews with policymakers and experts across Europe and then they publish the reactions to citizens' comments and promote them through social media. Through this platform, the European Union has been trying to produce a shift from latent to aware and active citizens [5]. The social interaction becomes more active especially when a conflicting issue is debated [6] and the Roma inclusion issue could fit into a successful debate since it always raises a high level of engagement and conflicted opinions. The main aims of this study are: (1) to identify the salience of (de)legitimating debaters and of (de)legitimating communication strategies; (2) to identify the most active debaters and the (de)legitimating strategies used by them.

2. Theoretical Framework

By applying a ‘bottom-up’ approach, we provide a new dimension to legitimation. Within the context of the online environment of dialogic communication, not only public organizations have the power to legitimate themselves, but also citizens are empowered to provide their opinions about various issues. Florian Pichler [7] considers that a ‘bottom-up’ approach towards European issues takes into account the perspective of individuals and “(…) instead of looking at normative concepts, the individual level perspective emphasizes the process ‘on the floor’”. Starting from Teun A. van Dijk’s [8] concepts of legitimation - L (“related to the speech act of defending oneself”) and delegitimation – DL (challenging the very existence or identity of the other group, downplaying its social position and/or practices), we will use only two important categories from Cmeciu and Manolache’s integrated model of online (de)legitimation [9]:

• members (belonging to a micro-group or macro-group): the debaters (citizens/ officials) who (de)legitimate the issue debated and the actors related to the respective issue;
• communication strategies: legitimation strategies (credit claiming, credit granting, requesting others to perform certain actions in the future) and delegitimation strategies (admiting mistakes, blame shifting, requesting others to stop from performing certain actions). These communication strategies are adapted from the five basic discursive legitimation strategies identified by Moritz Sommer et al.[10]: credit claiming (self-attribution of success, directed towards the speaker), credit granting (attribution of success to others), admitting mistakes (self-attribution of failure), blame shifting (attribution of failure to others) and requesting (request attribution to others).

Based on the integrated model of online (de)legitimation, the following research questions will be addressed:

RQ1: What is the salience of (de)legitimating debaters and communication strategies?

RQ2: Which debaters are the most active and to what categories of members they belong?

RQ3: What (de)legitimating strategies were used by the most active debaters?

 

2.1 Methodology

The current study used the quantitative and qualitative content analysis method to examine the comments generated by debaters on the ‘Debating Europe’ platform, related to the issue of Roma inclusion in Europe. In total, 263 comments were collected from two debates (“How can we tackle unemployment among Europe’s Roma?” - started on May 19, 2015 and “How can Europe end poverty and exclusion in the Roma community?” - started January 7, 2014) and 259 were fully coded in the final coding procedure.

2.2 Coding procedures

We structured the codebook on two main variables: members and communication strategies.

(a) The variable ‘members’ was structured on three codes:

• L/DL micro-group (MiG - debaters who belong to the Roma community group);
• L/DL mezzo-group (Mez-G - debaters who are citizens of a MS country where a Roma community is present);
• L/DL macro-group (MaG - debaters who are EU citizens in other Member States). Each of these groups was structured into four types of authority:
• personal authority (debaters who tell their own experience related to the topic debated);
• expert authority (debaters who are experts in the topic debated upon);
• role model authority (debaters who are a role model in the MS or EU country);
• impersonal authority (debaters who mention rules, laws to (de)legitimate the topic);

(b) The variable ‘communication strategies’ was structured on three codes for legitimation and delegitimation:

• L-credit claiming (Ls1 - debaters attribute success to themselves as part of the micro-group - MiG, mezzo-group - MezG, macro-group - MaG, or EU institutions);
• L-credit granting (Ls2 - debaters attribute success to others - to another micro-group, mezzo-group, macro-group or EU institutions);
• L-requesting others (Ls3 - debaters urge other actors to perform a certain action. These actors belong to a micro-group, mezzo-group, macro-group or EU institution);
• DL-admitting mistakes (DLs1 - debaters attribute failures to themselves, as part of the micro-group, mezzo-group, macro-group or EU institutions);
• DL-blame shifting (DLs2 - debaters attribute failures to others - to another micro-group, mezzo-group, macro-group or EU institutions);
• DL-requesting others (DLs3 – debaters urge other actors to stop a certain action. These actors belong to a micro-group, mezzo-group, macro-group or EU institution).

We transcribed the two debates and the comments and imported them into QDA miner, a qualitative data analysis tool. The QDA miner codes facilitated the comparison of frequency for the codes of legitimation (L) and delegitimation (DL) groups and strategies and the analysis of the tabulation between codes and comment debaters.

3. Findings

Figure 1 and Figure 2 show the distribution of (de)legitimation groups and (de)legitimating strategies. As observed, most debaters positioned themselves as delegitimators – personal authority (63.8%) on the Roma inclusion issue. Actually personal authority was the only type of authority activated by debaters engrossed within the two debates. Debaters belonging to the mezzo-group, namely to those European countries (Bulgaria, Romania, Greece etc.) where Roma communities are present were the most active debaters (as delegitimators - 30.4%; as legitimators – 15.7%), but citizens from other EU countries also took part in the debates (as delegitimators - 31.9%; as legitimators – 18.6%). Another important aspect to be noticed in Figure 1 is the scarce involvement of members of the Roma community in the debates about their own situation. Only 3.5% members of the micro-group took part in the debates, either as legitimators (2.0%) or as delegitimators (1.5%). This lack of engagement has two explanations: on the one hand, they are not interested in these online debates; on the other hand, they did not explicitly declare their belonging to the Roma community.

Fig.1 – The distribution of (de)legitimation groups

(issue: Roma inclusion in Europe)

As observed in Figure 2, delegitimation strategies are the most frequently used (63.8%) compared to the legitimation strategies (36.2%). Within the various types of (de)legitimation strategies, the delegitimation strategy of blame shifting (DLs2) dominates and it is mostly directed towards the micro-group (the Roma community – 24.1%), the macro-group (other EU countries which expelled the Roma people – 10.8%) and towards the EU institutions (9.1%). Although they are not salient as delegitimating strategies, the legitimation strategies are important since both debates were intended to find solutions from the citizens. Thus the legitimating strategy of requesting others (L3) is predominant, especially directed towards the macro-group (13.4%) and EU institutions (4.7%). There were debaters who tried to legitimate the micro-group through the strategy of credit granting (Ls2-micro-group 9.5%).

 

Fig.2 – The distribution of legitimation and delegitimation strategies

(issue: Roma inclusion in Europe)

The second research question was focused on determining the most active debaters on the Roma inclusion issue and to what type of (de)legitimating member group they belong. In the two debates 108 participants took part. Although most of them had only one conversation intervention, 34 participants had at least two interventions, as observed in the bubble plot generates by QDA miner (Table 1). The size and the number of the red bubbles under each debater show the degree of their involvement in these debates. The most active debaters were: Ruth Barnett, Borislav Valkov, or Adrian (both as a legitimator and as a delegitimator) and Karel van Isacker, Ana Georgieva or ironworker as delegitimators. Another important aspect is that only two debaters (zix and Natalia Duminica) explicitly positioned themselves as legitimators of the Roma community (LMiG).

Table 1. Distribution of types of (de)legitimating groups by debaters (code occurrence, bubble plot)

 

The third research question was focused on finding the salience of (de)legitimation strategies used by the most active debaters. As observed, the greatest number of bubbles is concentrated on the legitimation strategy of ‘requesting others’ (Table 2) and on the delegitimation strategy of ‘blame shifting’ (Table 3). Most of the active debaters used both types of strategies. For example, Ruth Barnett used the legitimation strategy of ‘credit granting’ to acknowledge the cultural contribution of the Roma community, but at the same time, she used the delegitimation strategy of ‘blame shifting’ targeting towards the macro-group, namely European countries. The active debaters, such as Karel van Isacker or Ana Georgieva, focused exclusively on shifting the blame onto the EU institutions for mismanagement of funds or onto the micro-group, blaming the Roma community for its way of living.

 

Table 2. Distribution of legitimation

strategies by debaters (code occurence, bubble plot)

Table 3. Distribution of delegitimation strategies by debaters (code occurrence, bubble plot)

 

4. Discussion and Conclusions

Although the number of delegitimation strategies outscored the legitimation strategies and the most active debaters preferred to use the ‘blame shifting’ strategy, we consider that the presentation of the legitimation strategies is more valuable within the context of the two debates, namely to find solutions to end poverty and exclusion in the Roma community and to tackle unemployment among this community members. This is the reason for which we will focus on ‘requesting others’ legitimation strategy (Ls3) in order to provide an insight into the solutions offered by the ‘Debating Europe’ debaters. The solutions expressed by debaters are directed towards the micro-group (Roma community), mezzo-group (countries where Roma people live) and macro-group (other European countries). From the debaters’ comments, three solutions targeted towards the Roma community are mentioned: (1) compliance with the laws of the countries they live in (Maia Alexandrova, May 21st, 2015); (2) acceptance to be educated by others and change of their nomad way of living (zix, March 19th, 2014); (3) acceptance to be part of the decision-making processes which may affect the Roma community (Ruth Barnett, March 19th, 2014). One important aspect that all these three debaters acknowledge is the double-edge of the Roma tradition: the good things the Roma people perform through their music is counterbalanced with the bad side of their way of living (early marriage, pregnancy, pickpocketing as a skill test to be accepted in the community). Other types of solutions are directed towards the mezzo-group (the countries inhabited by the Roma community, e.g. Romania, Bulgaria etc.). The most debated solution was provided by Borislav Valkov (July 8th, 2014) and it focused on taking the Roma children away from their parents and giving them the proper education: “If we really want them to integrate then we have to integrate their children and cut them from their parents mischief”. This solution is also supported by a member of the Roma community (zix – “BTW I m half Roma”) who makes a plea for a joined effort to invest in the Roma children’s education (“And I think Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria need to sit down at one table and do something together against this. If you put them in school and raise the way other childrens are, they will be benefitial for out society.”, zix – March 19th, 2014). The last group towards which requests are directed is the macro-group (other European countries where Roma people may have found temporary shelter or other EU countries which have not confronted with this problem). For example, Borislav Valkov makes a plea for an integrated society where all types of citizens should have the same rights: “But the main goal for an integrated society is to make the minority have the same rights and laws that are followed by the majority: so the jobless parents with many children must be thing of the past after the integration is completed or a law offenders that are innocent simply because they are Roma.” (March 20th, 2014).

Three other types of solutions are addressed: (1) provision of a minimum income for living (George Danieldsg, March 19th, 2014); (2) solidarity with the East European countries (“The integration of the Roma shouldn’t be a duty only of the poor affected East European countries. Where is the solidarity of the Western countries? It’s a similar problem as the challenge of the EU asylum policy. We need European solidarity and not nationalistic egoism.” - Dami An, January 8th, 2014); (3) the EU citizens’ interest in the Roma culture (“ ... you could start learning more about their world-wide culture and successes to balance those you know are trapped in poverty and discrimination”, Ruth Barnett, July 6th, 2015).

The inclusion of the Roma community will remain a sensitive issue for a long time because finding the proper solution would imply to challenge a tradition which seems to be the counterpart of the EU countries’ laws. An insight into the EU citizens’ opinions regarding this issue is valuable as long as the decision makers consider their comments and try to adapt the policies. One limitation of this study is that it did not provide an insight into the policy-makers’ opinions about the issue of Roma inclusion but our further studies will take into account the analysis of the EU officials’ comments.

Acknowledgement: This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation, CNCS-UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-RU-TE-2014-4-0599.

 

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