People seen as breaking moral boundaries are reframed as symbolic pollution to be purged

Evidence

People, like the Roma, who are perceived as transgressors of moral (and spatial) boundaries, are typically classifi ed as ‘matter out of place’. In everyday talk the Roma are represented as uncanny (Kristeva, 1982 ), a dangerous, ‘hovering presence’ (Sibley, 1995 ). They are seen as carriers of symbolic danger and pollution, and as a consequence ought to be cast away from where orderly life is conducted and kept outside society’s bounds. What is striking is how easy sympathy and reasonableness can be turned into delegitimizing and dehumanizing talk that alludes to Roma as residual, discardable, as something that needs purging, elimination and eradication. Obviously, eliminationist concerns are not something that can be proclaimed directly. Immoral tendencies must be kept at bay, under the veil of reasonableness. — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 633

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the sacrifice article’s theme of groups cast outside the moral community. — connects to: Criminalization attached moral stigma to environmental violations within regulated firms. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 727
• ADDENDUM: The eliminationist-aspiration ‘under the veil of reasonableness’ line feeds the immodesty article’s theme of moralized disgust expressed through respectable discourse.

Related

• Roma are punished for embodying values central to the European ideal (similarity 0.80)