Constructing human rights of Roma migrants: negotiating inclusion and globalization in transnational field of power

Although human rights are widely considered as the instrument ‘par excellence’ to install full and universal inclusion, it is increasingly acknowledged that more analysis is needed to explore the translation of these rights in practice. The human rights situation of Roma in particular calls for such research, as they face many persistent violations of their rights across multiple European countries. Particularly, although the right to mobility is celebrated as a core right of inclusion for European citizens, exclusionary tendencies hinder the practice of this right substantially when it concerns Roma. In order to grasp this human rights practice, we argue that we need to analyze 1) the discursive contestations around human rights and 2) by whom (which actors on which levels) these contestations are steered and dominated. Using this perspective, we look at the case of the evictions of Roma from their dwellings and their expulsions from France in the summer of 2010 (COHRE v. France), for which we analyze how different judicial, political, media and civil society actors on the local, national and transnational level employed and defended multiple meanings connected to human rights and the right to mobility in particular. In this discursive struggle, conflicting norms on inclusion in a globalized environment were balanced and negotiated. This had implications for the outcome of the incident in terms of decision by the European Committee of Social Rights but also in terms of public opinion on the Roma migrants and their inclusion in the local, national and global context