Racial Profiling of Roma: Operation «Tabor» as an Unintended Result of the Politicization of Child Neglect and Securitizing Practice

Abstract

This article attempts to move beyond traditional approaches to the study of racial profiling by placing it in the context of securitization studies. To overcome the contradictions existing within this scientific direction, the author uses approach proposed by Pierre Bourdieu, according to which the performative (a key concept in the theory of securitization) is considered as a manifestation of symbolic power.

The empirical basis of the study was more than 3,000 documents containing official orders and reports on anti-Roma raids, as well as calls to the population to be vigilant against Roma. The author shows that ethnically selective policing can be analyzed as a complex of securitizing practices that generate derivative securitizing discourses. To confirm this, the author conducts a case study of racial profiling of Roma. The analysis made it possible to establish that all-Russian anti-Gypsy raids were an unintended consequence of steps to securitize child homelessness and neglect taken by major political players at the turn of 2001/2002.

The proliferation and institutionalization of anti-Roma activities were possible due to the favorable or neutral reaction of most audiences observing the unfolding securitizing practices.

The routinization of anti-Roma raids has led to the fact that they are now perceived as something common and unproblematized, although this practice is clearly a type of ethnic discrimination and goes beyond the scope of «normal politics».

At the same time, participants in anti-Roma events, having internalized the perception of Roma as a source of threat and legitimate suspicion, unreflectively replicate securitizing discourses that mark the Roma population as a dangerous and unreliable group, upon meeting which citizens of a different ethnicity should take precautions or contact the police.