Governing Roma Inclusion through Urban Space: Policy Discourse, Ethnic Difference, and the Case of La Cañada Real
- 2 days ago
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Author: Mateo Rhôné
Abstract:
Social inclusion has become a central objective of European, national, and regional policy frameworks addressing Roma marginalization. Yet inclusion policies increasingly operate through governance regimes that regulate ethnic difference rather than simply alleviating inequality. This article examines how Roma inclusion is discursively rendered intelligible across urban and diversity policy documents in the European Union, Spain, and the Community of Madrid, focusing on La Cañada Real Galiana as a paradigmatic site of spatial intervention. Drawing on critical discourse analysis and frame analysis, the study analyzes four key policy strategies adopted between 2017 and 2021 across multiple governance scales. The findings show that inclusion is articulated through a multi-scalar and spatialized governing logic combining administrative categorization, monitoring, behavioral normalization, infrastructural intervention, and cultural recognition. At the European and national levels, inclusion is primarily framed through indicators, participation frameworks, and policy coordination mechanisms that render inequalities measurable and governable. At the regional level, these logics become territorialized through urban restructuring, demographic segmentation, and housing intervention. Roma communities are constructed simultaneously as rights-bearing minorities and vulnerable populations requiring targeted governance, while informal settlements are framed as incompatible with legality, infrastructural order, and contemporary urban life, legitimizing relocation and planning control. At the same time, symbolic recognition and participatory commitments coexist with regulatory governance, producing persistent tensions between visibility, inclusion, and control. By centering policy discourse, the article argues that inclusion functions as a differentiated mode of governing ethnic difference through urban space and administrative legibility. In doing so, it contributes to debates on Roma governance, urban marginality, territorialized inclusion, and the ambivalent limits of recognition-based policy frameworks.
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