The lifting of work restrictions for Romanian and Bulgarian citizens in the EU, in January 2014, encountered much resistance both in European political discourse and the media, as these migrants became demonised and presented as social and economic threats. In this article, we show how the Romanian press dealt with such discriminatory discourses against the Romanian migrants. We conduct a thorough Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) of news items published in Romanian press, prior to the lifting of work restrictions, and we argue that the Roma emerged as the perfect scapegoats that could explain the deviant and unruly behaviours ascribed by some western media to ‘Romanians’. We also show how racism toward the Roma, referred here as Romaphobia, invokes non-racial practices and instead builds on a reverse victimhood narrative. Such discourses relate in a broader sense to well-established discursive practices in Romanian context but also to the political climate across Europe which is marked by increased intolerance toward the Roma. It is the mixture of stereotypical discourses and populist rhetoric that makes racism towards the Roma appear naturalised and increasingly more difficult to challenge.

2014年1月，欧盟取消了对罗马尼亚和保加利亚公民的工作限制，在欧洲政治言论和媒体上都遇到了很大的阻力，因为这些移民被妖魔化并呈现为社会和经济威胁。在本文中，我们展示了罗马尼亚新闻界如何处理针对罗马尼亚移民的歧视性言论。在取消工作限制之前，我们对罗马尼亚媒体上发布的新闻进行了全面的多模式批评话语分析（MCDA），并且我们认为罗姆人成为了完美的替罪羊，可以解释某些西方国家所赋予的过分和不守规矩的行为。媒体到“罗马尼亚人”。我们还展示了对罗姆人的种族主义，在这里被称为“罗姆恐怖症”，是如何援引非种族习俗，而是建立在对受害者的反向叙事上。这种话语在更广泛的意义上与罗马尼亚语境中公认的话语习俗有关，而且与整个欧洲的政治气候有关，其特征是对罗姆人的不容忍度增加。正是陈规定型话语和民粹主义言论的混合，使得对罗姆人的种族主义显得自然而然，越来越难以挑战。