ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the newspaper material about the Roma beggars in terms of the following frames: criminals, objects of control, and victims. The Roma debate in Norway shows how looking at the transnational dimensions of a concrete situation may expand our knowledge and perspectives. Journalism on migration and minorities will probably be at the forefront of this change, as this is an area where the gaps between global and national perspectives are at its most visible. The chapter discusses the double-bind that the Roma experience, both as poor people making a living that non-Roma have little respect for, and as semi-nomads moving against the flow of what Bauman calls liquid life'. In the streets of Oslo, the Roma beggars use their deprivation as a financial comparative advantage and flaunt it, aware or unaware that they in this way break the unwritten law of respectable' poverty, as well as challenge the self-image of the classless Norwegian welfare state.
