COVID-19 Pandemic and the Raising of Inequality: The Romani Communities and the Media

Abstract

The Romani people are a minority that has been historically excluded, neglected, and persecuted in the different countries where they are settled, especially if we consider the context of their arrival in Europe and the colonization processes developed by European nations. Thus, this paper sheds light on how the Romani communities have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic from the communication and health perspective and provides a critical view of the abovementioned processes. We discuss theoretically how these ethnicities are crossed by multiple oppressions that place them in an unequal situation and the role of communication in their social inclusion or the maintenance of their exclusion. We highlight how their invisibility and how historical stereotypes were highlighted during the pandemic, deepening the unequal relations. From a critical perspective on discursive relations, we analyzed two journalistic reports from 2020, the local newspaper O Popular in Brazil and the national newspaper ABC in Spain. Some results suggest that the Romani population has been somewhat held accountable for disseminating the virus. Moreover, they seem to have been silenced as subjects capable of articulating and reflecting on their conditions and situations in the pandemic context, showing similarities in the portrayal of the Romani people in the Ibero-American context.