The paper examines the ways and processes of creating exceptions to the enforcement of human rights law in the case of the Eastern European Roma migrants within the European Union. It uses as case study the 2010 campaign of Roma migrants’ evictions and repatriations from France, and the related events that followed over a period of six years. The analysis of the discourses of French and European Union officials in relation to the evictions and repatriations highlights the relationships between the discursive construction of unwanted categories of migrants, and migration policy making by national governments and at a European Union level. The main argument is that these evictions and repatriations were primarily a fundamental rights issue due to the discriminatory dimension it was given by those proposing and applying it. However, the issue of discrimination became secondary in the debates which rather focused on the exceptional nature of the Roma and framed this population as an exception from human rights law enforcement. Concomitantly, the discourses made a shift from protection against discrimination to the issue of integration. The analysis examines the implications this shift had on diminishing the responsibility of national and EU authorities for protection against discrimination. © 2018, The Author(s).

discrimination Roma Expulsions Eastern European migrants

immigration policy immigrant Italy European Union repatriation human rights Lazio policy making forced migration law enforcement Roma [Lazio]