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Gypsy-Travellers: stigmatisation and social integration

Gypsy-Travellers: stigmatisation and social integration. Ryan Powell Conflict in space and place - accommodation and planning issues for Gypsies and Travellers, De Montfort University, Leicester, November 29th, 2012. Contested Gypsy-Traveller community. shared aspects of culture

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Gypsy-Travellers: stigmatisation and social integration

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  1. Gypsy-Travellers: stigmatisation and social integration Ryan Powell Conflict in space and place - accommodation and planning issues for Gypsies and Travellers, De Montfort University, Leicester, November 29th, 2012.

  2. Contested Gypsy-Traveller community • shared aspects of culture • shared space of the site • common response from government and authorities • BUT...heterogeneity and disidentification among different groups

  3. Social integration? • Not straightforward; binaries can be unhelpful • inclusion/ exclusion • social care/ social control • integration/ assimilation • What's the problem with segregation? What's to be achieved by reducing it? (Flint, 2009) • positive and enabling factors of segregation • strengths and weaknesses of spatial concentration (Marcuse, 1997; Wacquant, 2004, 2008) • integration on whose terms? • importance of a long-term, historical perspective i.e. persistent persecution and stigma • 'mixing without integration' (Sibley, 1998) • functional interdependence; unequal power relations; mutual avoidance

  4. Gypsy-Travellers perceived to be at odds with dominant norms • social integration = individualization and self-betterment • group orientation of Gypsy-Travellers • extended family and socialisation • inter-generational mixing • educational differences • remarkable resistance and cultural continuity in the face of pressures to conform • resistance and maintenance of culture and nomadism deemed "less civilised" • Gypsy-Travellers treated as inferior; of lesser human worth - key question is why and how is this so persistent?

  5. Learning from the "ghetto"? • 2 key and related questions: • why does the stigmatisation of Gypsy-Travellers run so deep and persistent over the last 500 years? • how have Gypsy-Travellers maintained their own identity and culture? • Loïc Wacquant's concept of the "ghetto" as a tool of comparison (Powell, 2013) • Gypsy-Traveller sites are NOT ghettos • BUT...commonalities....a weapon of 'confinement and control' for the dominant and an 'integrative and protective device' for the stigmatized

  6. Commonalities with Wacquant's ghetto • spatial confinement and control • ethnic homogeneity • retreat into the sphere of the family • mutual distancing • shared cultural identity reinforced through confinement

  7. Divergence from Wacquant's ghetto? • changing economic function? • parallel institutionalism? • relationship with the state? • the above represent areas for further research that could enhance understanding through comparative analyses with Wacquant's theoretical concept of the "ghetto"

  8. References • Flint, J. (2009) 'Cultures, ghettos and camps: sites of exception and antagonism in the city', Housing Studies, 24(4), pp.417-431. • Marcuse, P. (1997) 'The enclave, the citadel, and the ghetto: what has changed in the post-Fordist US city', Urban Affairs Review, 33(2), pp.228-264. • Powell, R. (2013, forthcoming) 'Loïc Wacquant's "ghetto" and ethnic minority segregation in the UK: the neglected case of Gypsy-Travellers', IJURR. • Sibley, D. (1998) 'Problematizing exclusion: reflections on space, difference and knowledge', International planning studies,3, pp. 93-100. • Wacquant, L. (2004) ‘Ghetto’, International Encyclopaedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences. • Wacquant, L. (2008) ‘Ghettos and anti-ghettos: An anatomy of the new urban poverty’, Thesis Eleven, 94, pp.113-118. • Wacquant, L. (2012) 'A janus-faced institution of ethnoracial closure: a sociological specification of the ghetto', in Hutchison, R. and Haynes, B. D. (eds) The Ghetto: Contemporary Global Issues and Controversies (pp.1-32). Boulder: Westview.

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