Media mirrors? Framing Hungarian Romani migration to Canada in Hungarian and Canadian press

Abstract

The most recent migration of Roma from Central-Eastern Europe to Canada started in the 1990s. Several thousand people from former socialist countries, including Hungarian Roma, moved overseas. There were many reasons but for Roma, the motivations not only included a drastic loss of employment, but re-emerging systemic and increasingly violent racism. This article focuses on the discursive framing of these motivations and the reaction within both Hungarian and Canadian newspapers from 1999 to 2013. In the article we show how the press engaged in framing and counter-framing the policies and politics of the host country through their coverage of “the Hungarian Roma” issue. Specifically, we focus on the differing and shifting spheres of consensus and the changing political/policy contexts by conducting an in-depth comparison of the changing media frames in Hungarian and Canadian newspaper coverage. We show how the “Hungarian Roma issue” becomes an example and reflection of the changing political culture.