Gypsy Politics And Social Change

This book, first published in 1974, analyses the position of the Gypsies in Britain in the twentieth century, and assesses its significance in their overall history. Two dramatic shifts in Government policy towards the Gypsies are examined – in the 1880s and the 1960s – as are the changes in the stereotype of the ‘true Gypsy’. Dr Acton traces the developments of attitudes and economic conditions that gave rise to the 1970s increase in interest in Gypsies, and discusses the concomitant political and pressure group activity. He gives an account of the historical background to modern Gypsy politics; describes the postwar situation of the Gypsies in England and Wales, including pro-Gypsy pressure group activity up to 1965, and goes on to cover the campaigns of the Gypsy Council, including a sociological assessment of its work. He considers these aspects of Gypsy life in the light of modern sociological theory on minorities and race relations.

Relations with the state and with non-Gypsies have been central to the shaping of the lived identity of Gypsy people. This book examines how the state deals with Gypsies and travellers, and how they deal with the state. It also provides a comparative study of Gypsy politics in Britain and abroad.

Gypsies and the British Imagination, 1807-1930, is the first book to explore fully the British obsession with Gypsies throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Deborah Epstein Nord traces various representations of Gypsies in the works of such well-known British authors John Clare, Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, George Eliot, Arthur Conan Doyle, and D. H. Lawrence. Nord also exhumes lesser-known literary, ethnographic, and historical texts, exploring the fascinating histories of nomadic writer George Borrow, the Gypsy Lore Society, Dora Yates, and other rarely examined figures and institutions. Gypsies were both idealized and reviled by Victorian and early-twentieth-century Britons. Associated with primitive desires, lawlessness, cunning, and sexual excess, Gypsies were also objects of antiquarian, literary, and anthropological interest. As Nord demonstrates, British writers and artists drew on Gypsy characters and plots to redefine and reconstruct cultural and racial difference, national and personal identity, and the individual's relationship to social and sexual orthodoxies. Gypsies were long associated with pastoral conventions and, in the nineteenth century, came to stand in for the ancient British past. Using myths of switched babies, Gypsy kidnappings, and the Gypsies' murky origins, authors projected onto Gypsies their own desires to escape convention and their anxieties about the ambiguities of identity. The literary representations that Nord examines have their roots in the interplay between the notion of Gypsies as a separate, often despised race and the psychic or aesthetic desire to dissolve the boundary between English and Gypsy worlds. By the beginning of the twentieth century, she argues, romantic identification with Gypsies had hardened into caricature-a phenomenon reflected in D. H. Lawrence's The Virgin and the Gipsy-and thoroughly obscured the reality of Gypsy life and history.

The shocking poignant story of eviction, expulsion, and the hard-scrabble fight for a home They are reviled. For centuries the Roma have wandered Europe; during the Holocaust half a million were killed. After World War II and during the Troubles, a wave of Irish Travellers moved to England to make a better, safer life. They found places to settle down – but then, as Occupy was taking over Wall Street and London, the vocal Dale Farm community in Essex was evicted from their land. Many did not leave quietly; they put up a legal and at times physical fight. Award-winning journalist Katharine Quarmby takes us into the heat of the battle, following the Sheridan, McCarthy, Burton and Townsley families before and after the eviction, from Dale Farm to Meriden and other trouble spots. Based on exclusive access over the course of seven years and rich historical research, No Place to Call Home is a stunning narrative of long-sought justice.

This volume hopes to act as a catalyst for some new and exciting areas of enquiry in the more “liminal” interstices of Irish Studies, Traveller Studies, Romani Studies and Diaspora and Migration Studies. These disciplines are all relatively new areas of enquiry in modern Ireland, a country whose society has witnessed very rapid and wide-ranging cultural and demographic change within the short space of a decade. The issue of multiculturalism is not one which is particularly new to Irish society as a number of contributors to this volume point out. What is new however is an increased acknowledgement of diversity and multiculturalism in Ireland and Europe as a whole. Such an acknowledgement makes increased dialogue between “mainstream” society, older minorities such as the Irish Travellers and the many newer immigrant communities such as the Roma all the more necessary. For such constructive dialogue to take place it is vital that migratory peoples and their particular expressions of postcolonial identity be voiced and valued. These identities are both complex and diverse and frequently straddle a number of countries and national identities. It is hoped that this volume will go some way towards the cultivation of such dialogue.

Ilona Klímová-Alexander brings Europe's largest transnational and most marginalized ethnic minority, the Roma (Gypsies), into the discourse of international relations. The book describes and analyzes the attempts of the Romani activists to gain voice in world politics by interacting with the United Nations (UN) system and explores their capabilities and impact. This study has three objectives: it provides an introduction to global Romani activism in terms of its anatomy, history, political manifestos, goals and activities; it establishes the extent and essence of the Romani voice in world politics and its influence on the UN discourse on Roma; furthermore, it looks at how interacting with the UN system has affected the organizational structure of the global Romani activism and its discourse. Based largely on primary resources and fieldwork, this book will engage international relations scholars, political scientists and those concerned with social movements and ethnic and racial studies.

Using an oral history approach, this book draws on Gypsy and non-Gypsy narratives to tell the story of Gypsy forced dislocation from Bayramic, a northwestern town of Turkey, in 1970. Gül Özatesler examines memory construction, the categories of Gypsyness and Turkishness, and the different perspectives and positions that emerged, considering all in relation to underlying socioeconomic structure. The book reveals how ethnic and other identities can be deployed to conceal socioeconomic and political inequalities.

Landscapes of Liminality expands upon existing notions of spatial practice and spatial theory, and examines more intricately the contingent notion of “liminality” as a space of “in-between-ness” that avoids either essentialism or stasis. It capitalises on the extensive research that has already been undertaken in this area, and elaborates on the increasingly important and interrelated notion of liminality within contemporary discussions of spatial practice and theories of place. Bringing together international scholarship, the book offers a broad range of cross-disciplinary approaches to theories of liminality including literary studies, cultural studies, human geography, social studies, and art and design. The volume offers a timely and fascinating intervention which will help in shaping current debates concerning landscape theory, spatial practice, and discussions of liminality.