24 results
Eight - Participatory action research with refugee and asylum-seeking women
- Edited by Gary Craig
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- Community Organising against Racism
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- 12 April 2022
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Summary
Introduction
This chapter discusses the methods, processes and outcomes of a Comic Relief-funded three-year community development and advocacy programme undertaken with Refugee and Asylum-Seeking Women (RASW) in London. It focuses on how the use of participatory action research and training delivered by RASW can challenge and inform the way in which ‘professionals’ deliver health and legal services to vulnerable communities. The project, undertaken during 2012–15 by Independent Academic Research Services (IARS), a London-based charity, was co-designed with participant beneficiaries with the explicit aim of generating institutional change and increased gender sensitivity in the treatment of RASW, both through harnessing research findings to drive policy and practice change and by allowing women themselves to articulate the problems they currently face in terms of accessing appropriate support.
IARS (now renamed as the IARS International Institute) specialises in utilising community development methods in its work with young people at risk of exclusion, and other vulnerable groups, aiming to bring about policy change while enhancing participants’ knowledge and skills base. The three-year RASW project (entitled Abused No More) was carried out in partnership with Buckinghamshire New University/Institute for Diversity Research, Inclusivity, Communities and Society (IDRICS).
The context to the Abused No More project
Prior to examining the community development processes used within this project and the findings and practice-focused outcomes and recommendations, we commence with a short discussion on existing legislation, literature and research relevant to this work. These materials demonstrate that while legal advice and health services available to refugees and asylum seekers are typically regarded as gender blind and politically neutral, and thus perceived of as adding to the ‘public good’, in practice, underlying presumptions and common professional models of engagement can increase harm to women who are already vulnerable, hence creating a cycle of re-victimisation (Singh, 2010; Tate, 2015).
The UK asylum system (operationalised by the UK Border Agency [UKBA]) is governed by a complex mixture of international law (that is, United Nations Conventions and Protocols, and European rulings and guidance) as well as individual legislative enactments by states that are signatories to the United Nations 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.
eight - Below the radar: Gypsy and Traveller self-help communities and the role of the Travellers Aid Trust
- Edited by Andrew Ryder, Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem, Sarah Cemlyn, University of Bristol, Thomas Acton
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- Hearing the Voices of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Communities
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- 04 March 2022
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Summary
Introduction
“Who do they think they are teaching? We were a Big Society long before the government thought of it.”
The quotation that opens this chapter is drawn from an interview undertaken by one of the authors with a Gypsy woman participating in a community development programme. The scathing nature of her response to a question about the impact of ‘Big Society’ initiatives on inclusion opportunities for members of her community is perhaps unsurprising, when we consider the duration of self-help initiatives and that strength of networks within travelling populations over many centuries (Smith and Greenfields, 2013). Despite the centuries-old vibrant culture of self-help among nomadic communities, identified by Okely (1983), and Acton's (1974) characterisation of Romanies’ adaptive techniques and patterns of resilience to poverty and exclusion, in terms of popular discourse, Gypsies and Travellers are cast by service providers as either ‘hard to reach’ or ‘victims’ (Cemlyn et al, 2009), and more likely still are perceived by the general public as the undeserving beneficiaries of welfare payments and state ‘special treatment’ (Powell, 2010; Quarmby, 2013). In this chapter we set out to explore the strengths of Gypsy/Traveller community organisations in challenging exclusion, and the role of agencies – particularly the Travellers Aid Trust (TAT) – in capacity building among community members to assist them in developing evidence-based, culturally appropriate programmes, while providing practical support to small ‘under the radar’ groups entering the fiscal fray and ever-changing world of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in austerity Britain.
McCabe et al (2010), in their review of the literature pertaining to small, ill-funded voluntary sector agencies and community groups (often organised from within the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) sector), propose that the term ‘below, or under, the radar’ has become a shorthand term often applied to loosely constituted community groups undertaking informal or semi-formal activities in the third sector. The Office of the Third Sector guidance paper (2008, p 2), in an early use of the term, noted that the phrase is ‘ungainly, but is the best available terminology for those organisations which are not included in the main national registers … [and] which are not large enough to register with the Charity Commission or Companies House and are perhaps associated more closely with community building and participation than with service delivery’.
Appendix A - Methodologies
- David M. Smith, Canterbury Christ Church University, Margaret Greenfields, Buckinghamshire New University
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- Gypsies and Travellers in Housing
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This project has entailed use of a variety of qualitative methodologies as a result of the mixed data sources mined for information on the subject of housed Gypsies and Travellers.
Literature review
A combination of desk-top and manual library searches was undertaken to gather information on the presence of Gypsies and Travellers in areas relevant to the study. Whilst the authors possess a considerable number of the relevant texts cited, further research was undertaken in the University of Liverpool library (Gypsy Lore Society collection); the University of Cambridge library and the British Library, London. Internet searches utilising search terms such as ‘housed’, ‘Traveller’ and ‘Gypsy’ were made. The Merton Historical Society was a useful source of information on the Gypsy connection to south London. In addition, sweeps of specialist collections such as the Old Bailey on-line search engine, archives of local history held in public libraries and generalised searches for references to Gypsies and Travellers in specific areas of London, the South East and South West were undertaken.
Secondary analysis of Gypsy Traveller Accommodation Assessment (GTAA) data
As the authors have, in partnership and individually, undertaken a considerable number of GTAAs across the study areas we were privileged to have access to full data sets for the wider areas within which our focused studies took place (other than London).
The process by which we undertook calculations of the numbers of Gypsies and Travellers and the general methodology entailed in undertaking GTAAs is explained in depth in Chapter Four. Having access to primary data sources meant that we were able to carry out detailed analysis of core themes of interest in this text – drawing on occasion on qualitative quotations gathered for the purposes of relevant GTAAs.
Focus group data
Within the GTAAs which we have been responsible for, or worked on, we have evolved a practice of embedding focus groups into our research design to enable us to explore key themes (both with professionals and community members) in greater depth. The transcripts of focus groups carried out with Gypsy and Traveller participants resident in housing were data-washed and sorted to enable selection of housed participants, then subjected to in-depth secondary analysis utilising ‘Framework’ processes (Ritchie and Spencer, 1994).
two - Space, surveillance and modernity
- David M. Smith, Canterbury Christ Church University, Margaret Greenfields, Buckinghamshire New University
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In this and the following chapter, the empirical sections of the book will be situated in their broader theoretical, historical and contemporary contexts and an attempt will be made to tease out the interconnections between these dimensions. For example, historical and comparative studies show that racism and persecution have been constant features of the relationship between Gypsies, Travellers and the wider society, albeit the degree and virulence has varied at different periods according to wider social, political and economic conditions (Kenrick and Puxon, 1972; Fraser, 1995). However, the prejudice and marginalisation experienced by nomadic communities today, while displaying much historical continuity, is also related to factors specific to contemporary socioeconomic and political processes such as a general increase in inequality and polarisation of life chances as well as a growing social and political intolerance towards disadvantaged groups over the past three decades (McGhee, 2005). As Wacquant (2008) observes, these processes have unleashed massive ‘structural violence from above’ on large sections of the unskilled labour force in the ‘advanced’ economies of the western world, consigning many to economic redundancy and social marginality (2008, p 24). At the same time as traditional ‘blue collar’ jobs have been decimated through deindustrialisation and globalisation, so the (former) manual working classes have had to contend with large-scale immigration that is generally championed most vocally by those social groups who benefit directly or indirectly from a cheap and flexible immigrant labour force (Hanley, 2011). Consequently many immigrants are channelled into the same decaying and spatially segregated neighbourhoods as economically redundant sections of the native population. These marginalised segments of the native and immigrant populations are socially and spatially segregated from the rest of society, where ‘territorial stigma’ with its attendant class and ethnic dimensions is a reality of their daily lives. As Wacquant notes:
Any comparative sociology of the novel forms of urban poverty crystallizing in advanced societies at century's turn must begin with the powerful stigma attached to residence in the bounded and segregated spaces, the ‘neighbourhoods of exile’ to which the populations marginalized or condemned to redundancy by the post-Fordist reorganization of the economy and the post-Keynesian reconstruction of the welfare state are increasingly consigned. (Wacquant, 2008, p 169, italics in original)
List of tables
- David M. Smith, Canterbury Christ Church University, Margaret Greenfields, Buckinghamshire New University
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Appendix B - Glossary of words and terms
- David M. Smith, Canterbury Christ Church University, Margaret Greenfields, Buckinghamshire New University
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Summary
Authorised site (also known as a ‘licensed site’)
A site which has planning permission for use as a Gypsy and Traveller site.
Cant/Gammon/Shelta
Cant is technically a form of Celtic language group which includes Gammon and Shelta languages used respectively by Irish and Scottish Travellers. Irish Travellers will often use the term ‘Cant’ interchangeably with ‘Gammon’, the specific language spoken within their community.
Caravan
Mobile accommodation consisting of kitchen area and bedrooms. Referred to as a trailer by many Gypsies and Travellers. (New Travellers may often live in converted trucks/buses/vans or other forms of living vehicles which fulfil the same function as a caravan.)
Chalet
Term used by Gypsies and Travellers, usually referring to a mobile home on a site, specifically a form of mobile home which resembles a bungalow.
Chavvy/chavvies
Romani word for ‘child/children’.
Cushti/cushy/kushti
Romani for ‘good’/something positive.
Divvy
Mad (“my cousin can be right divvy …”). Romani term.
Dukkering
Romani word for fortune-telling.
Fairs, or specifically named events such as ‘Appleby’ or ‘Stow’
Horse Fairs and associated cultural events dating back centuries attended by large numbers of Gypsies and Travellers to trade animals, meet friends and relatives; buy and sell and meet potential marriage partners. Of huge cultural significance, and for many sedentarised Gypsies and Travellers the only times in the year when they ‘travel’ or live in a trailer.
Family site
A private caravan site owned and occupied by an (extended) family. Broadly equivalent to owner-occupation in mainstream housing.
Gavver
Romany word used by Gypsies/Travellers to refer to the police.
Gorje/Gorgio/Gorge/Gaujo/Gadje/Gaje – ‘Settled community’/Country People/Flatties
‘Gorjer’ (spelt in a variety of different ways) is a Romani term used by Gypsies to describe all non-Gypsies and Travellers.
‘Settled community’ is a term used by Gypsies and Travellers to describe people who are not Gypsy or Traveller by ethnicity or culture and who live in bricks and mortar housing.
‘Country People’/‘Flatties’ are the Irish Traveller equivalents of the ‘gorjer’ and refer to non-Travellers resident in housing.
Gypsies/Travellers (statutory definition – 2004 Housing Act)
The Housing (Assessment of Accommodation Needs) (Meaning of Gypsies and Travellers) (England) Regulations 2006 (Statutory Instrument 3190/2006) were implemented in order to resolve the definition of Gypsies and Travellers in relation to the duties under the Housing Act 2004.
References
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ten - Conclusion
- David M. Smith, Canterbury Christ Church University, Margaret Greenfields, Buckinghamshire New University
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Social inclusion, diversity and cultural resilience
As outlined at the beginning of this book, the key objectives of this study were to highlight the main causes behind the settlement of Britain's travelling communities and to explore the individual and collective manifestations of this trend. We have discussed the ways in which longer-term processes of settlement and sedenterisation have occurred in tandem with wider processes of urbanisation and industrialisation. In this study we have made manifest the stark impact of the implementation of successive post-war government policies, transforming an entire culture through making nomadic lifestyles progressively untenable.
The enforced immobilisation of the majority of Britain's Gypsies and Travellers and their continuing marginalisation highlights a number of basic contradictions in what is purported to be a diverse yet socially inclusive nation while raising fundamental questions over the nature of inclusivity and ‘tolerance’. Enforced settlement (which, as the empirical sections of the text testify, has been the majority experience for housed Gypsies and Travellers) has for many of our participants been a deeply dispiriting experience which has left a legacy of social exclusion, bewilderment and resentment mirroring the narratives of Aboriginal peoples in America, Australia and elsewhere (ALRC, 1986; Manson et al, 1996). The relentless drive to sedentarisation regardless of the human cost, begs the question of whether political support for ‘choice’, minority lifestyles and endorsements of equal rights is motivated primarily by political expedience, as a diversion from more deep-seated economic and class-based social divisions and a malaise in citizen engagement across the UK
McGhee (2005) suggests that ‘intolerance of intolerance’ represents more than political ‘lip service’ and is in fact part of a wider political project striving towards commonality in respect of the ‘shared values and standards of an emergent citizenship for a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-faith Britain’ (2005, p 12). Whilst on the surface this may seem laudable, it does raise the problematic spectre of a mono-cultural amorphous model which submerges class, culture and individual identities and practices. These policy goals are also continually frustrated both by subversive individuality and undermined, as Tam (2005) notes, by the spread of insecurity and social fragmentation engendered by economic forces and an increasing concentration of power.
one - Introduction
- David M. Smith, Canterbury Christ Church University, Margaret Greenfields, Buckinghamshire New University
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Conventional and frequently romanticised portrayals of Gypsy and Travellers’ lives are often preoccupied by ‘paradigm[s] of romanticism and a biological/hereditary nexus’ focusing on these aspects of identity until members of those communities are beyond recognition as members of wider civic society (Belton, 2005, p 46). This text seeks to examine the decline of nomadic lifestyles among Britain's Gypsy and Traveller population and ‘rehumanise’ the debate through exploring the impact of a (largely enforced) sedentary existence on these communities and the collective adaptations that have evolved in response to significant changes to their traditional way of life.
This book explores how these changes have had both generational and gender-based impacts, as over recent decades there has been a steep decline in the ability of Gypsies and Travellers to live a nomadic existence, as residence on permanent caravan sites and in conventional housing has become the norm for most of the estimated 300,000 population (CRE, 2006). The majority of this population, as many as two thirds, are now believed to be living in ‘bricks and mortar’ housing. The large-scale settlement of travelling communities has been driven by successive policies that have sought to accommodate Gypsies and Travellers (and to some extent recognise their continued cultural preferences for caravan dwelling) whilst engaging with the stubborn and continued issue of unauthorised encampments and the resulting tensions with the settled community (Richardson, 2007b). In practice such policies have often had the unintended consequences of worsening the situation by inflaming conflicts with settled society whilst simultaneously accelerating the settlement of Gypsies and Travellers onto a declining supply of official pitches or, for many more, into social housing where they place additional demands on an already overstretched housing stock. Despite the rate and size of this settlement into ‘bricks and mortar’ in recent decades and an extensive body of research into the housing ‘careers’ and residential patterns of other minority groups, this book represents the first detailed study of Gypsies and Travellers in housing to be published in Britain.
nine - Young people in housing: aspirations, social relations and identity
- David M. Smith, Canterbury Christ Church University, Margaret Greenfields, Buckinghamshire New University
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This chapter draws predominantly on two focus groups conducted in the South East and South West research sites in addition to data gleaned from secondary analysis of GTAA focus groups and household interviews conducted in the primary research locales. It explores the experiences of young housed Gypsies and Travellers (aged 25 or less) and the evolving nature of spatially bounded social relationships among these youthful cohorts, for many of whom life in conventional housing has been their predominant experience. The chapter focuses on the dynamics of intercommunity and interpersonal relations and discusses how an increasing social and cultural convergence with non-Traveller youth generates generationally specific understandings of Gypsy/Traveller identity as well as intergenerational divergences in those conceptualisations. These differences predominantly coalesced around notions of collective identity; the differing emphasis placed on the symbolic role of nomadism; in attitudes surrounding intergroup relationships and the importance placed on boundary maintenance and corresponding perceptions of ‘authenticity’ (see further Chapter Six). The timing and intersection of radical social transformations (such as the move from nomadism towards settlement) and generation-specific attitudes are central to understanding the tension that emerges between older cultural precepts and an emergent youth culture more attuned to new social circumstances (Sztompka, 2000).
Under such conditions new solidarities and identities develop, which express two contradictory forces: inter-generational conflict, in addition to a simultaneous desire for identification and continuity with the parent culture (Smith, 2005). Edmunds and Turner (2002, p 6) argue that a ‘sociology of generations’ and of generational consciousness must begin with the historical context and shared experiences through which that consciousness was formed. Such a perspective was utilised by the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) in their analyses of post-war working-class youth culture, and is relevant to a fuller understanding of how the undermining of nomadic traditions and the transplanting of Gypsies and Travellers into housing is mediated by both gender and age-cohort. Collective responses and adaptations to external change are differentiated on the basis of both, whilst still retaining an overall adherence to more generalised shared values and worldviews. As Clarke et al (1993) note:
Here we begin to see how forces, working right across a class, but differentially experienced as between the generations, may have formed the basis for generating an outlook – a kind of consciousness – specific to age position: a generational consciousness. (Clarke et al, 1993, p 51)
Acknowledgements
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six - Housing transitions
- David M. Smith, Canterbury Christ Church University, Margaret Greenfields, Buckinghamshire New University
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Summary
The previous chapter highlighted the main routes through which the Gypsies and Travellers interviewed in the different locations included in this study arrived in housing. While a degree of autonomy could often be exercised in relation to neighbourhood (see Chapter Eight), for many the move into housing was experienced as a severe limit on individual agency and an attendant diminution of accustomed lifestyle. As noted in Chapter One, fundamental and rapid changes in one's social landscape can impact traumatically at a group level, and ‘supply the prevailing mood and temper, dominate its imagery and its sense of self, [and] govern the way that members relate to each other’ of a collectivity (Erikson, 1995, p 190). At the individual level, such transformations may constitute a ‘blow to the psyche that breaks through one's defenses so suddenly and with such brutal force that one cannot react to it effectively’ (Erikson, 1995, p 187). This chapter addresses the participants’ experiences of moving into housing and the multi-layered sets of concerns that must be addressed when moving into what is frequently an alien type of accommodation while simultaneously having to deal with an unfamiliar and foreign set of circumstances.
Bennett (1998, p 215) notes that ‘culture shock’ refers to the ‘anxiety that results from losing all of our familiar signs and symbols of social intercourse’. This anxiety arises due to the loss of perceptual reinforcements from one's own culture and exposure to new stimuli which can be disorientating in terms of disruption to familiar cultural patterns. The concept is pertinent in understanding the transition from sites or the roadside into housing, which also involves a deeper-rooted transition from a cultural framework that emphasises a ‘we’ consciousness, collective identity, emotional dependence and group solidarity towards one premised on an ‘I’ consciousness defined by emotional independence, individual initiative, the right to privacy and personal autonomy (Kim, 1995, p 4).
Our adaptive processes fail to meet the needs of the moment, and we find ourselves overwhelmed by the stimuli we are forced to assimilate. Therefore, if transition shock is a state of loss and disorientation precipitated by a change in one's familiar environment that requires adjustment, then culture shock may be characterized as transition shock in the context of an alien culture. (Bennett, 1998, p 216)
Contents
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three - Gypsies, nomads and urbanisation: a social history
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Since the mid 19th century questions surrounding the urbanisation of Gypsies, the consequences of increasing contact with ‘gaje’/‘gorjer’ (non-Gypsy) society and the qualitatively different nature of such interactions in urban contexts, have been central to scholarly debates concerning the origins and destiny of this group. According to Mayall (2004), the most basic distinction in this debate is between two paradigms. The first provides racial, linguistic and ancestral explanations highlighting the Indian origins of the various diasporic Romani groups that are today scattered around the world (Hancock, 2002; Kenrick, 2004). This model was initially promoted in the journal of the Gypsy Lore Society (GLS), which was founded in 1888 by scholars and others interested in the culture and language of the Gypsies. At that point in its history, the GLS favoured a model based on scientific racism, which was strongly opposed to the ‘mixing’ of cultures and sought only to legitimise those Gypsies deemed to be of ‘pure-blooded’ ancestry (Hancock, 2007). Whilst the stigmatisation of ‘half-breed Gypsies’ and the insistence on the purity of bloodline is now widely discredited as a product of its time, the early work undertaken by members of the GLS into linguistic and socio-cultural patterns remains critical to the recognition of Gypsies as a people with Indic origins and an admixture of diverse European heritages as they made their way from the Balkans (where they were first recorded in around 1300 ce) towards the British Isles.
In contrast, the second model of Gypsy and Traveller origins offers a socio-historical explanation pointing to the many indigenous nomadic groups that emerged in Europe in the early modern period. This perspective highlights nomadism, economic and cultural practices and collective stigmatisation as the primary criterion for inclusion (Gmelch, 1986; Lucassen et al, 1998). Despite the overlap between these positions and an acknowledgement of intermixing between Romani and indigenous travelling groups, the political and legal ramifications of this dichotomy means that such nuances have often been ignored. Classification of different nomadic groups along racial lines and the construction of status hierarchies to classify those groups has long been of concern to state officials and other commentators. Historically, argues Mayall (2004, p 4), official efforts to label different nomadic groups for legislative and policy purposes symbolise the perennial failure of state responses to nomadism and provide ‘the clearest instances of how responses and category definitions are inextricably linked’.
Frontmatter
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seven - Gypsies, Travellers and gorjers: conflict and cooperation
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Summary
We have identified how settlement into conventional housing can entail significant psycho-social and practical challenges for former caravan dwellers. In our subsequent exploration of the various difficulties in adjusting to housing experienced by respondents we will focus on how living in proximity to close kin and being able to access networks of social relationships act as a protective factor in preserving wellbeing (Dawkins, 2006; Fletcher, 2009). The community-based nature of Gypsy/Traveller culture centred around principles of ‘bounded solidarity’ – in-group oriented and with a strong sense of collective solidarity engendered by external threats to the group – has been observed amongst these communities in various historical and geographical contexts (Okely, 1983; Gmelch, 1986; Sanders, 2002). This and the following chapter investigate the structure and nature of these social relations in the study areas and delineate the patterns of interactions that simultaneously generate social closure and boundary maintenance along cultural and ethnic lines and characterise inter-group relations with co-resident neighbours from outside of the travelling community. As explored in previous chapters, inter-group relations and a merging of boundaries between Gypsy/Travellers and largely low-income groups is not a new phenomenon though we posit that in recent decades the pattern of such engagements may be changing in the light of increased diversity within low income areas of dense public housing (Rutter and Latorre, 2009). This chapter thus examines how neighbourhood-level factors influence the cohesiveness of social relations that exist between housed Gypsies (see further Chapter Eight), the nature of inter-group contacts and the extent to which social ties transcend their own boundaries to include their ‘gorjer’ neighbours.
While structural and societal level factors have most commonly been invoked to explain the persistently marginal status of Gypsies and Travellers this status manifests itself, and is contested, in everyday social interactions. For Bottero and Irwin (2003) issues of identity and difference are located within grounded accounts of social practice that consider the relational aspects as ‘elements and outcomes of social changes’. Social relations, they point out, are variable across different historical and cultural contexts, and ‘a focus on their particular articulation helps to shed light on the shaping and reshaping of social experiences and inequalities’ (p 464).
Gypsies and Travellers in Housing
- The Decline of Nomadism
- David M. Smith, Margaret Greenfields
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This is the first published research from the UK to address the neglected topic of the increasing settlement of gypsies and travellers in conventional housing. It highlights the complex and emergent tensions and dynamics inherent when policy and popular discourse combine to frame ethnic populations within a narrative of movement.
Index
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five - Routes into housing
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Summary
In all of the research locales outlined in the previous chapter, significant Gypsy and Traveller populations are resident in conventional housing as a consequence of the broader legislative, social and historical forces previously discussed as well as resulting from individual preferences and circumstances. In recent decades, the housing ‘careers’ and residential characteristics of minority groups have received extensive attention (Sarre et al, 1989; Somerville and Steele, 2002; Robinson and Reeve, 2006), with research consistently showing that despite significant differences between BME groups they tend as a category to be disadvantaged in relation to housing; 26 per cent of BME households reside in social housing compared to 18 per cent of all households in England and Wales. Evidence also indicates that these households experience higher levels of over-crowding and are more likely to be concentrated in deprived areas (Shelter, 2010b). Since 1997 levels of homelessness among BME households have risen at over twice the rate of the general population (Shelter, 2004). This trend may well accelerate in coming years as a result of their concentration in urban centres, particularly London due to its high concentration of BME groups. More recently concern has been expressed that a combination of housing benefit caps, a severe shortage of affordable housing and high rents in the private rental sector will result in a rise in homelessness and a significant relocation of low income groups beyond the boundaries of the capital to areas where rents are lower (Radical Islington, 2012) in essence creating ghettos for the poor similar to the ‘banlieues’ of Paris (Silverstein and Tetreault, 2006). Families with more than three children will be particularly affected as the number of London neighbourhoods that are not ‘largely unaffordable’ for housing benefit claimants will be halved (from 75 to 36 per cent) by 2016 as a result of reforms to the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) (Shelter, 2010a). This process of spatial restructuring (as we saw in Chapter Two) is global in nature: as nation states have become more spatially polarised between a ‘network of globalized metropolitan centres’ and ‘non metropolitan localities and peripheries’ so the poor, economically inactive and those minorities who are unable, or unwilling, to participate as global actors and consumers are subject to new forms of spatial zoning and control (Bancroft, 2005, p 5).
eight - Recreating community
- David M. Smith, Canterbury Christ Church University, Margaret Greenfields, Buckinghamshire New University
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- Bristol University Press
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- 03 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 17 July 2013, pp 155-174
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Summary
As explored in the previous chapter, social relations between housed Gypsies and Travellers and their sedentary neighbours are not infrequently characterised by tensions, and the use of (mutual) negative stereotyping which can sporadically flare into open conflict. As a response both to the potentially hostile environment in which some housed Gypsies and Travellers find themselves and as a mechanism for preserving and asserting their own cultural identity, specific strategies are utilised. Holloway (2005) examines how white rural residents in the vicinity of Appleby horse fair construct and racialise Gypsies and Travellers, which subsequently shapes how they relate towards them. She argues that general attitudes towards these groups, as well as discursive constructions of differences within the travelling population (between ‘true’ Gypsies and ‘hangers on’), are based on certain physical and cultural markers. In contrast to ‘passing’, whereby individuals from stigmatised groups attempt to pass as members of ‘mainstream’ society, one strategy involved the accentuation of these physical and cultural markers and adoption of an overtly ‘Traveller’ identity demonstrating the range and adaptability of collective strategies which may be employed depending on the specific situational context. Strategies may involve avoidance of contact with individuals from other communities or use of Romanes or Gammon/Cant as an exclusionary tactic. Matras (2010, p 169) notes that the use of Romani vocabulary among British Travellers is a result of ‘insiders insisting on the maintenance of a group-particular form of speech, coupled with the functionality of an in-group lexicon in the social context of a tight knit peripatetic group’.
Other tactics include the manipulation of stereotypes for personal advantage such as cultivation of an aggressive and violent demeanour or the feigning of illiteracy, all of which may feature within an armoury of techniques utilised by informants. The maintenance of cultural boundaries and retention of distinctive minority identities through distinctive strategies are common to a number of diasporic communities (Song, 2003; Hewstone et al, 2007). Conversely, as considered in the following chapter the cultural markers which signify membership of the Gypsy or Traveller community can, in certain socio-spatial contexts, be seen as a desirable form of cultural capital by young people from a range of ethnic groups. Fernandez Kelly (1994) highlights the close relation between social and cultural capital: both are defined by physical factors like the characteristics of space and also by collective categories such as class, gender and ethnicity.