Migrant minorities in Europe: The expulsion of Romani people by Italy and France (2008 and 2010) in the Spanish newspapers

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the treatment of gypsies in the Spanish press during their expulsion from Italy and France in 2008 and 2010, under the governments of Sarkozy and Berlusconi, because Spain was considered a potential receiving territory of this migrant minority. For the study, the newspapers El paí­s, ABC, and La vanguardia were selected. The interest in this case is that it can be considered an antecedent to the tensions that the arrival of refugees in recent years have generated. The methods used were the quantitative analysis of the linguistic corpus in 474 texts and a critical analysis of the discourse in a selection of the sample. The results show an association of the migrant minority with controversy and marginalization, and that the treatment moves away from the guidelines drawn by the style books of the newspapers taken into consideration.