Redistribution, recognition or representation? EU Roma integration policies as a test for social justiceA comparative study of Italy and Spain

Resumen

The present work is a comparative study that aims at better understanding the integration measures targeted at Roma minorities in Western Europe. An analysis of the cases of Italy and of Spain allows for delving into multiple and layered mechanisms of ‘othering’ minorities, which have to do with issues that are both cultural (who gets to be a ‘national’ minority), economic (if integration is interpreted as the antonym of socio-economic marginalization) and political (including whether migrant communities should be included in the same integration framework as non migrant ones). The research has at its core a social justice framework and adopts a critical discourse analysis as a methodology of choice, examining legislative documents as well as first hand data, through interviews with policy makers. Stemming from the question of which identity framework used in addressing Roma integration has proven more effective, and for whom, I carried out a comparative study of the policy frameworks adopted by Italy and Spain as a way to make a more general contribution to understanding injustices that have multiple causes. The PhD research builds upon Nancy Fraser’s theoretical framework and it applies to the case of Roma integration the dialectical relationship between different typologies of injustices: cultural injustice (that requires recognition), socio-economic injustice (that requires redistribution) and political injustice (that requires representation). The methodology employed is a triangulation between policy mapping, critical frame analysis and interpretative interviews, drawing upon Carol Bacchi’s “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” approach. As a result, the dissertation is structured in five main chapters: the first chapter presents the conceptual and theoretical framework of the thesis, the second chapter outlines the methodology employed and the background of the case studies, the third chapter tackles the problematic of recognition, the fourth chapter addresses the issue of redistribution, and the fifth chapter the matter of representation. The main contribution of this work to our understanding of integration is that it explores how the underlying assumptions of policy-makers about what constitutes a policy problem shape the way in which they promote policy solutions. These policy solutions, in turn, hold the potential of converting the minority ‘to be integrated’ into the problem itself, rather than tackling the structural exclusionary mechanisms which continue to produce and reproduce the status quo.