Gypsy-Travellers and Welfare Professional Discourse: On Individualization and Social Integration

Abstract

This paper examines the subtle ways in which welfare professionals in the UK construct Gypsy culture as subordinate to the dominant Western concept of 'civilization'. Qualitative empirical evidence is presented to show how notions of a resistance to processes of individualization and social integration -which draw on conflicting interpretations of childhood and a perceived lack of aspiration amongst Gypsy-Travellers -are seen as legitimate grounds for state and social welfare intervention. The paper argues that a strong group orientation and a more marked gendered division of labour are constructed as being at odds with these dominant social processes. It is posited that the 'civilizing' project against Gypsy-Travellers ignores cultural norms and values resulting in the perception that they are undeserving. The paper suggests that theoretical accounts of social processes at a society wide level require revision in order to understand their varying impact on peripheral minorities in specific spaces.

‘Caravan wives’ and ‘decent girls’: Gypsy-Traveller women's perceptions of gender, culture and morality in the North of England

“…As asserted by Herron and Skinner Further, I argue while traditional gender roles are prevalent in the majority of families there are discernible differences between and within individual families and communities. These findings signal the need to be alert to this heterogeneity in attitudes (Powell, 2010;Vanderbeck, 2005). Some Gypsy-Traveller women are showing increasing signs of incremental change in their attitudes to the education of their children but they seem less willing to compromise their feelings on moral issues and traditions regarding marriage, family and the care of children.…”

“…Certain groups of women, for example black, working class women cannot inhabit the category of femininity because of the dominant which is always filtered through classed and racialised judgements. In the context of the individualisation thesis women are seen to have undergone profound changes in relation to their position vis a vis the market place and family relations (Powell, 2010). In post-modernity…”

“…For example, a recent book by Richardson and Ryder (2012) on Gypsies and Travellers' empowerment and inclusion in British society makes only a passing reference to gender inequalities. The 'resounding silence' (Lennon, et al, 1988, p.11) surrounding Gypsy-Traveller women suggests that gender equality issues are neglected in both academic and policy discourses with some notable exceptions (Cemyln, et al, 2009, Powell, 2010). …”

Europe’s perennial ‘outsiders’: A processual approach to Roma stigmatization and ghettoization

“…In the case of Roma groups the greater propensity for intergenerational mixing and the traditional approach to learning through family and community participation and socialization (Okely, 1983;Liégeois, 1987;Vanderbeck, 2005), coupled with external hostility, suggest a stronger familial and group identification (Powell, 2013). Or in Eliasian terms a "we-I balance" in favour of the "we" (Elias, 2001), which suggests a different individualization process among Roma groups to that prevalent across much of western European society (see Powell, 2011). Whereas the dominant trend has been one in which 'individuals, workers, and citizens, become less linked to national communities, to form their own individual entity in a late modern European world where borders and collective categories are becoming less obvious' (Van Gerven and Ossewaarde, 2012), the group identifications of Roma and wider disidentifications from them ensure the persistence of a strong "we-image" (Elias, 2001).…”

“…Similarly, within Elias's (2000) civilization process, that same period corresponds to a change in the general function of the term "civilization": it came to express the 'selfconsciousness of the west'; of progress with a goal (see Powell, 2011). For the middleclasses of western Europe the process of civilization was taken as a given: it had been completed and forgotten.…”