Dehumanization via Racialized Gendered Structure

In most academic literature, dehumanization understood as a cognitive behavioral or discursive action. For instance, dehumanization in this sense perceiving or talking about someone or a group of people as non-human or sub-human. Smith conceives dehumanization as a psychological phenomenon that represents a politically formed thinking. He states: “When we dehumanize others, we assign them a peculiar status. We typically think of them as beings that appear human and behave in human-like ways, but that are really subhuman on the “inside”” (Smith 2016:418). This paper extends the general notion of dehumanization by unveiling the gendered and racialized structural violence that hinders Roma people, particularly women from developing their capacities, dispositions, and possibilities to change their dire condition that dehumanize and sub-humanize them. Following in those scholars’ footsteps who discuss the discriminatory (dehumanized) mechanism of the structure that sustain and reproduce injustice and challenge the legalistic (visible) approach to violence. As Yves Winter (2012) explains, the positivist definition of violence captures only the visible, observable act attributed to an individual subject (perpetrators). Structural violence, racialized and gendered space which de-humanize and sub-humanize Roma is heritable and reproduced across generations. Their vulnerability is further enhanced by agent-driven violence or hate crime. This is the what Roma and other racialized groups face. Smith, D. (2016) “Paradoxes of Dehumanization.” Social Theory and Practice 42, (2) : 416-443. Winter, Y. (2012) Violence and Visibility, New Political Science, 34:2, 195-202, DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2012.676397