Gypsy students in the UK: the impact of ‘mobility’ on education

Abstract

This paper argues that Gypsy students in primary and secondary education in the UK are marginalised because of ambiguous understandings of their ‘mobility’. Drawing on research conducted on the south coast of England, it examines Gypsy families’ experiences of education. Despite often describing their identity in relation to travelling or mobility, few families’ lifestyles were characterised by actual movement or nomadism. Teachers and educationalists meanwhile cite the need to deliver a ‘mobile’ rather than a ‘sedentary’ education for Gypsy students. The Department for Communities and Local Government recently defined Gypsy ethnicity in direct relation to a nomadic lifestyle. This is problematic as the association between Gypsy ethnicity and nomadism is itself questionable and may be better understood in more nuanced terms reflecting the relationship between identity and ‘mobility’. This paper argues that ‘mobility’ is understood to define Gypsy difference in a way that excludes students.

Keywords:

• Mobility
• sedentarism
• cultural boundary
• nomadism
• Gypsy
• Traveller

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Silvia Carrasco and Bálint Ábel Bereményi who invited me to present an early version of this paper at the VIII Congreso sobre Migraciones Internacionales in 2015 and who provided very helpful comments on the paper; to Kalwant Bhopal for reading and commenting on the article; and to the anonymous reviewers for their very constructive and encouraging comments.

Notes

1. ‘Gypsy’ and ‘Traveller’ are contested terms; historically and in contemporary usage both are often used pejoratively. In the UK, they are also used as terms of self-ascription (Okely 1983). In this research most families referred to themselves as ‘Gypsies’. The term ‘Roma’ was understood by respondents to refer to people from Eastern Europe; whilst ethnic links were identified between ‘Gypsies’, ‘Travellers’ and ‘Roma’, no families in this research referred to themselves as ‘Roma’.