Supporting the learning of nomadic communities across transnational contexts: exploring parallels in the education of UK Roma Gypsies and Indigenous Australians

Abstract

Deriving from the authors’ respective ethnographic fieldwork (around two decades in each context), this position paper considers experiences of education across two communities: Gypsy/Roma in the UK and Indigenous in Australia. The article brings together understandings across these traditionally nomadic communities, with no shared history or cultural connections other than nomadism, but with common experiences of exclusion, inequity, alienation and disrupted patterns of participation in formal education systems. Drawing on initiatives in recent years involving various Indigenous and nomadic groups, the authors suggest core notions that might underpin a culturally appropriate curriculum and pedagogy. They also propose amended conceptions of nomadism, allowing for recognition of challenges that persist even when nomadism is no longer integral to lifestyle. Rejecting policy positions that view inclusion as a solution, they outline the difficulties for youngsters, in each context, in seeking to inhabit two worlds with conflicting value-systems, and with contrasting beliefs about the ways in which children should be educated. The article identifies several cultural, socio-political and economic obstacles that are mirrored across each context, and argues for negotiated settlements between the state and such minority/marginal communities so as to enable an inclusive curriculum to be established that respects the cultures and aspirations of all communities.

Keywords:

• nomadism
• Indigenous
• Gypsy/Roma
• education
• marginalised groups

Notes

1. The term ‘Indigenous’ refers to Aboriginal peoples on the mainland of Australia and the island state of Tasmania and to the islander people of the Torres Strait between the state of Queensland and Papua New Guinea. As with ‘Gypsy’, a capital letter is used for ‘Indigenous’, as it would be for e.g. ‘English’ or ‘French’ group members. There is discussion in Australia regarding the difference between the words ‘Aboriginal’ and ‘Indigenous’ and how they are interpreted by different groups of people.

2. There is fluidity in the use of terms to describe Roma/Gypsy groups. This is an outcome of shifts in policy usage and also of changing preferences with regard to self-ascription. In UK policy documents, the term GRT (Gypsy/Roma/Traveller) is currently popular. Gypsies have often avoided the term ‘Traveller’, which fails to acknowledge rights as a separate ethnic group, and is based purely on lifestyle. Generally, they prefer not to be linked to other travelling groups. However, within schools, youngsters sometimes opt for the neutral term ‘Traveller’. The term ‘Roma’ is sometimes contested as many English Gypsies do not wish to be associated with more recent Eastern European Romani migrant groups.

3. Gadje is a (pejorative) term used to describe the non-Gypsy.