The data corpus

The discussion in the following two chapters (as well as the documentation of Romani vocabulary in Appendix I) drawns on a corpus of interview recordings, carried out mainly between 2005 and 2008 with around forty individuals who describe themselves as English or Welsh Gypsies. They live in various parts of England and Wales, including the Northeast (County Durham and West Yorkshire), the Northwest (Lancashire and Cheshire), south Wales, West Midlands, Staffordshire, Leicestershire, Oxfordshire and Surrey. The great majority reside in mobile caravans (‘trailers’) but have usually been based in the same caravan site for a generation or even longer. Some have moved from caravans into houses sometime during the past decade but still keep caravans alongside the house, which they use either continuously for some members of the family, or just seasonally, when they travel to other parts of the country. Others, by far a small minority of those interviewed, tend to stay on one site for periods of between several months and two or three years and then move on to a different site in another part of the country. Seasonal travelling in caravans especially during the summer months and occasionally to fairs and other gatherings is common among all participants.