To briefly outline the case, in 2015, an unprecedented number of irregular migrants arrived in Hungary, mainly asylum seekers from the warzones of Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. The government sealed the border with a barbed-wire fence and launched a fierce and overwhelming anti-immigrant campaign depicting migrants as invaders, a threat to the community, problematising their cultural and religious differences, and so on
(Fekete
2016; AIDA,
2020; Gyollai and Korkut,
2019). As suggested above, shared social identity would already enable consensus on the approval of exclusionary initiatives, such as the fence. To be sure, xenophobic discourses are generally framed with reference to the shared knowledge, typical concerns, and pre-existing relevance structure of the target audience (see Gyollai,
2020). Nevertheless, shared group membership coupled with the government’s “siege mentality” (Bar-Tal,
2000: ch. 5–7; Bar-Tal & Teichman,
2005: ch. 2) has certainly been proven to be effective at unifying the in-group, and, simultaneously, generating and justifying collective hostility against migrants as out-group members. As a result of the campaign, xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiments among the public peaked in 2016. In tandem with self-categorisation, the stereotypical perception of migrants has also been prompted. Now, what is interesting for the purpose of this paper is how out-group categorisation took place, i.e., the outgroup characteristics and corresponding stereotypes being activated and attributed to migrants. As mentioned earlier, some police and military personnel involved in border control referred to migrants as “Gypsies” adding that they look like and behave like Roma Gypsies.
10 It is notable that members of the public also drew comparison between the two groups, arguing that migrants, just like the Roma, are “lazy” and would only be a “burden” to the community; they pose a “threat to public safety” and the crime rate would increase; furthermore, they would be unable to integrate into Hungarian society (see Simonovits,
2020). However, it is not self-evident why Roma Gypsies and the associated stereotypes (and not something else) are relevant and play a seemingly important role in the out-group categorisation of migrants. To put it another way: why is an intermediary category required to describe migrants in the first place, instead of referring to
migrants as such? To answer this question, one needs to be (1) aware of the fact that this was the first time Hungary saw mass migration from the Middle East on that scale in its modern history, i.e., it was a novel experience for most Hungarians, and (2) familiar with the significance of the
Gypsy as ideal type in Hungarian popular- and police occupational culture. As to the second condition, although the Roma community is the largest ethnic minority in Hungary, the perception of the public towards them is traditionally and notoriously hostile. The overwhelming majority of the non-Roma population avoid any social interaction with Roma people, who are stigmatised, discriminated against and often live in poverty with all the implications segregation entails
(Fekete,
2016). The police have a long record of institutional racism and abuse of power against the Roma (Hera,
2017). Ethnic profiling, disproportionate stop-and-search practices and brutality have been an ever-present feature of police-Roma encounters. Although the term “Gypsy-criminal” is nowadays mainly used by openly far right groups, the corresponding attitudes have remained part of both popular and police culture, i.e., the Roma are perceived to be dangerous and a threat to society. Thus, based on Schutz’s theory of relevance, perhaps the following pattern can clarify why the ideal type of the
Gypsy has been triggered. The memory or stock of knowledge comprises all possible types applied in previous situations when encountering individuals crossing borders: traveling for leisure - tourist; searching for a job - economic migrant; fleeing warzone - asylum seeker, and so on. Each of these types has interpretative relevance as far as people on the move are concerned, i.e., they are all on the inner
horizon or the interpretive spectrum of individuals who feature the basic characteristics typical to a traveller. Again, to decide which one of these types as sub-categories defines migrants depends on my prevailing interest. To put it simply, to an NGO worker, an irregular migrant means a vulnerable person in need of immediate protection, while a human smuggler would approach the same person as a customer. Given the purpose of their role, the police are likely to interpret migrants against the background of their previous work experiences and typifications pertaining to their job. That is, the Roma Gypsy might have served as a characterological type, or an on-hand interpretive scheme, the police already familiar with in terms of danger and threat. On the one hand, the prevailing interest, as per government policy, is to stop migrants at the fence
in order to refuse entry,
because migrants pose a threat to the community. On the other hand, to the police, Syrian refugees, having travelled for months in the same set of clothes, and because of the colour of their skin, may physically appear similar to Roma Gypsies (see fn. 9). In other words, the
Gypsy as the archetype of the presumably dangerous
Other, whom the police frequently encounter in their everyday work, might appear both motivationally and interpretively relevant to make sense of migrants.
11 Such identification of migrants by the police, again, derives from and mirrors the broader public perception of Roma people. In other words, the stereotype of Gypsies as the dangerous
Other originates from the community (i.e., ingroup) the police represent, hence the overlap between public attitudes towards the Roma and migrants mentioned earlier. In this sense, the police are only citizens in uniform.
It is important to note that, due to the persistent anti-immigrant campaign (sedimentation), the stereotype of migrants as a threat has been solidified over time. With the type of migrant becoming part of the common-sense knowledge of Hungarians in its own right, the identification process has been reversed on some occasions. Locals voluntarily reported individuals to the police whom they assumed to be migrants based on physical appearance, such as skin colour or outfit; many of the reported people turned out to be Hungarian Roma citizens.