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ABSTRACT ABSTRACT In November 2002 a Romanian journalist published an editorial attacking the Romanian authorities for 'playing the democratic card' and failing to prevent 'thieves, hooligans and criminals' from going to the West and disgracing all Romanians. The journalist, Lia Epure, entitled her article 'Rromania', a play on the Romanian government's spelling of Roma (i.e. 'Rroma'), and concluded that, if Romanians 'continue to accept identification with abnormals, then we will be become Rromania'. In response to vocal Romani and human rights group protests, Epure published a second article defending her right to say what 'even the president of the European Commission knows', that Romanians are not accepted as EUropean 'because of Ţigani'. Woodcock explores how both elite and popular levels of Romanian discourse blame Romania's continued marginalization in EUrope on the actions of the Ţigan, a fantastic Other, historically constructed out of ethno-nationalist Romanian discourses at moments of crisis for national identity. The discursive struggles for meaning with regard to the constructed ethnic Other highlight the paradox of post-socialist Romanian ethno-nationalism in an era of European Union accession: in order to be recognized as EUropean, Romanian discourse must relinquish the Ţigan Other, even when it is this precise construction that has historically enabled Romania to claim a European identity. Keywords: ethnicityEuropean Unionhuman rightsidentity formationnationalismRomaRomaniaRroma Acknowledgements Thanks are due to Judith Keene and Glenda Sluga at the University of Sydney, Alison Moore of the University of Queensland, the anonymous reviewers of this journal as well as for the helpful comments I received at the Association for the Study of Nationalities conference in 2005.
Shannon Woodcock (Fri,) studied this question.