The Right to Participation of Minorities and Irish Travellers

Abstract

The idea of participation is becoming increasingly important in international human rights law and recent political and constitutional theory. There is an emerging international law on the right of minorities to participate in public life. There are many problems, however, with putting this right into practice. It is not enough to offer formal opportunities for representation or even to facilitate more participatory processes. This article explores how participation is more easily proclaimed than practised by examining the position of one ethnic minority, Travellers, in a liberal democracy, Ireland. While there are many formal opportunities for participation, these do not necessarily result in effective participation on the basis of equality. They still result in many decisions that fail to consider the Traveller culture and identity. There are hopeful avenues to pursue in improving participation: civil society organisations have shown considerable initiative, especially in making use of a dialogue between non‐governmental organisations and international organisations to put pressure on a national government. Within representative institutions, there is the possibility of special representation to offset the disadvantages of traditional representative democracy and also the suggestion that specialised parliamentary bodies may be more willing to address issues of minority concern.

The politics of genealogical incorporation: ethnic difference, genetic relatedness and national belonging

“…The contradictory approach of the Irish state to Traveller ethnicity reflects tensions within the liberal governance of ethnic difference. The state is ideally impartial in granting and protecting equal rights to citizens irrespective of difference, and bound by national and extrajudicial -in this case EU and UN -requirements to address the position of ethnic minority groups, including nomadic minorities (O'Connell 2006;Moore 2004). But in practice this 'impartiality' is inflected by the imaginaries of the ethnic nation which privilege the majority culture and restrict meaningful public space for ethnic difference (Hall 2000).…”

Participation, Pain, and World Making

“…Irish and European anti-Traveller racism is rooted in a dialectic of barbaric/civilized, similar to one I will discuss in regard to mixed martial arts (MMA) fighting. Despite efforts in recent decades to provide formal opportunities for their civic participation, they remain marginalized from Ireland’s liberal democracy (O’Connell 2006). Ultimately, Travellers are positioned as a social Other who, via their nomadism and antiassimilation, represent the uncivilized, anachronistic, traditional outsiders to the civilized, settled, industrialized modern world (MacLaughlin 1998).…”