Where are the Romanies? An Absent Presence in Narratives of Britishness

Abstract

AbsractThe article explores the exclusion or ghettoization of British Romani experience in narratives of historical Britishness, an action that resounds in contemporary politics and identities. It suggests that scholarship might do more to retrieve quotidian and, in particular, shared histories of British Romani culture, integrating those histories into broader narratives about a national past. This scholarly retrieval of everyday Romani life in the past involves reconsidering what might constitute evidence of this experience, and might be open to rewriting established orthodoxies of Romani/Gypsy Studies, with an awareness of the politics of such subversion.

“NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN”:Romany Gypsies, Travellers and their entwined historical relationships with working-class London communities

“…Although acknowledged as living within the nation state, in a progressively sanitised and petty bourgeois society, Gypsies and other itinerants were increasingly perceived of by legislators, as apart from it (Matthews, 2015). Conceptualising Gypsies in this way implied a distinct "geography of savagery", which naturally led "uncivilised" elements to retreat to the fringes of society.…”

What field? Where? Bringing Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History into View

“…Indeed, Jodie Matthews has claimed that historians 'run the risk of reproducing a vision of these cultures as silent (and thus spoken for), separate (and thus marginalised), and subaltern', and as a result suggests that many historians have decided that writing GRT history is simply too difficult a task. 51 While we do need to acknowledge the difficulties in researching their histories, this article has demonstrated the multiple ways in which historians have already gone some way to take up the challenge. Here it is perhaps useful to remind ourselves that neither lack of literacy nor negative state attention has prevented historians of other marginalised or stigmatised groups from constructing empathetic and finely grained histories from unlikely sources.…”