As Lentin (1999) points out, the term ‘settled Traveller’ is an oxymoron. Despite this, it is common parlance within media corporations that is often used to describe Travellers who are living in local authority housing. Its connotations are nuanced but fit, implicitly, into a binary of ‘good Traveller / bad Traveller’, as this is interpreted and mobilised, for the most part, by the mainstream media in Ireland. In reportage on Travellers, especially in cases of anti-social behaviour or criminality, the term ‘Traveller’ alone will typically be used. By contrast, if the context of the report is an individual Traveller who is perceived to be achieving goals or worthy of merit, the term ‘settled Traveller’ is more likely to be employed.
The kernel of McRuer’s (2006) conception of passing as a strategy for disassociating oneself from the larger group has relevance for Travellers with impairments. This form of passing is less about concealment than minimalization in which identity is not hidden but modified in the interests of the dominant group. If a Traveller subject describes themselves or is given the category of ‘settled Traveller’, this category lends itself to connotations of respectability and amenableness with respect to settled culture and society. The ‘settled Traveller’, it is implied, will endeavour to overcome exclusionary boundaries and achieve an element of acceptance by
the settled community. In the medical model of disability, in which disability is presented as tragedy, the equivalent of this would be what has been called the ‘super crip’, the disabled subject who endeavours to overcome or rise above their implicitly, inferior position in the eyes of the non-disabled. As McReur (2006) emphasises, the implied value in this modified identity is the effort of striving for normality; even if ‘normality’ cannot be achieved or fully achieved, one is proving oneself a ‘good’ disabled person or Traveller.
‘Settled Traveller’ is also a term which is used by the settled community to differentiate between the ‘good’ Traveller and the Traveller who has, by contrast, not been assimilated or rehabilitated. The phrase almost includes this subset of Travellers as part of Irish settled identity. It is a gesture of assimilation which has traditionally been reflected in formal government policies and data-gathering strategies, including national censuses. Despite
forming a separate or parallel part of the general Irish population since premodern times, it was only in 2006 that Travellers were afforded the opportunity to identify as Travellers in the state census; previous censuses did refer to Travellers, but in ways which undercut Traveller agency and worked against self-identification as Travellers. For example, when numerators came upon a Traveller halting site, they would not necessarily dispense census forms to the inhabitants. Instead, they might consult with a local authority and gather figures for the Traveller
population from them instead. Where forms were dispensed to households, including local authority housing and other households in which Travellers lived, they did not allow
participants to identify as Travellers on the census form. This loophole played out in two ways; either Travellers were presumed to be settled or they could pass as settled. Either way, the distinctness of Traveller identity was elided from official censuses.
Some Travellers, particularly those who live in rural areas, may have lived in the same location over many years, and encouraged their children to identify as settled Travellers. Arguably, this identifier, which disassociates the subject from the larger Traveller community, could be interpreted firstly as motivated by a desire to see children progress and have more
opportunities for acceptance, education and employment than their parents have had. Secondly, the term ‘settled Traveller’ is a useful means of disassociation when negative or damaging stories about Travellers or the Traveller community are circulating in national media. When this happens, the term ‘settled Traveller’ can be a nuanced means of saying ‘I am not one of them.’ Motivation to identify as a settled Traveller is also derived from the meanings implied by this phrase when used by settled people – it infers malleability and amenability to
assimilation, qualities valued by an assimilationist model of social organisation.
It is worth examining whether identifying as a settled Traveller can be seen to bring benefits or compromises to the Traveller subject. The why, where and when can be framed by media negativity, stereotyping, othering and promotion of an image of Travellers that is characterised by deviancy. In this context, Traveller identity is understood as something to be overcome. Significantly, media and historical writings on Travellers tend to describe individuals as coming from a ‘Traveller heritage’, another term which is more nuanced or loaded than it first appears; heritage is something static and historical, or past. By reverting to the term ‘heritage’ an opportunity is missed or avoided to engage with Traveller identity and culture as fluid, interchangeable, developing or influenced by context.
While passing may be perceived as an opportunity, or as something which potentially opens- up opportunities for education and employment – or just a diminishment in racial
discrimination – this opportunity comes, as others have observed, at a significant emotional price. The promotion of ideals of progress and of furthering oneself by keeping one’s head down, or disassociating oneself from other Travellers, has echoes of the 1960s, pre-civil rights era of African American oppression. That stigma, shame and internalised oppression from others can be placated or offset by cooperation and self-concealment is not a new concept. In everyday life and in the media, gay and lesbian people have often felt obliged to pass as heterosexual.
Identifying as a settled Traveller is a form of passing because it does not fully conceal
Traveller identity; rather, it modifies this identity, to disassociate it from negative stereotypes accruing to Traveller identity, as this identity is conceived of and projected by the settled community, especially via the media. ‘Settled Traveller’ is a nebulous concept which ultimately functions as a conduit – a corridor to settled access and settled privilege.
In addition to the examples given above, fears regarding a lack of access to service provision, the avoidance of racist encounters and of negative association via the media or public
perception, are all likely reasons why Travellers themselves would use the term ‘settled Traveller’ to describe themselves or others in certain situations. On the one hand, occupying the position of settled Traveller opens, as we have seen, avenues of potential access to settled privilege. On the other, it does not wholly conceal or reject Traveller status and therefore keeps
open the possibility of accessing and embracing Traveller ethnicity, identity and culture, in its richness and fullest sense. In other words, settled is a prefix that is not fixed. It is an add-on, adopted out of necessity, that can be dropped or erased in a moment, and it does not
permanently reshape the individual Traveller’s sense of identity. Indeed, ‘settled Traveller’ can, contextually and to a degree, be considered a sign of resistance to settled identity since it insists on including ‘Traveller’. In this way it signals an unwillingness to relinquish or conceal this fundamental identity in interactions with the dominant, settled culture, even if the context requires or demands the prefix ‘settled’.
Internally, within the community, practices of passing or practices which are seen to facilitate passing as settled can, in some contexts, be held in suspicion. In the case of formal education, Travellers who enter and stay within formal education were characterised by others within the community as expressing a desire to be settled, or ‘acting settled’. Although, this viewpoint is changing, it is significant that education should be a site of such dispute or tension because in Ireland it has been a key place of assimilationist coercion on behalf of state agencies and the government, as was discussed earlier in this thesis. Therefore, arguably, it is this
assimilationist association which causes formal education to be linked to settled culture, and to be a sign of some desire to be settled or act settled. In my own childhood, when a large
majority of Travellers lived in trailers or even in barrel-topped wagons, those who did live in houses were known as ‘estranged Travellers’. Again, this echoes earlier contexts for civil rights struggles, and particularly the lives of black Americans in the 1950s; a time of heightened racial tension, when those people who integrated with or appeared to desire integration with aspects of the dominant culture were put in an ambiguous position by their own community or considered to be acting ‘too white’. A similar phenomenon has occurred within the Traveller community.
Within the Traveller community education is, and has been for some time, understood as a possible avenue to further opportunities, one that creates possibilities for overcoming poverty and deprivation. Within the formal education structures of Irish life, however, syllabi from infancy to post-graduate level do not allude to Traveller identity, deal with Traveller ethnicity or include Traveller history, in anything but the most cursory sense. Instead, formal education has been an influential agent of assimilation and serves to standardise Irish culture. It is not surprising, then, that Travellers who engage with academia can find themselves in a precarious position within the family and the community. In recent times, formal education is increasingly
valued and identified as useful and worthy within the Traveller community. Rising levels of engagement and ambition is evidenced. However, attainment in second and third level remains a difficulty, and is, at present, less in evidence. 91% of Travellers leave school at age 16 or younger and 28% before age 13 (Watson et al., 2017).
The retention and redefinition of cultural traits and values within Traveller culture is a
complex and nuanced process; passing, as well as progression to education proper {not merely as a means of passing but a form of personal enrichment} are phenomena which must, finally, be placed in the context of a minority culture negotiating with a dominant one. Externally, there are rewards from settled people, in terms of perception and access, when one identifies as a Traveller but behaves ‘like’ a settled person, engages with settled culture or identifies as a settled Traveller. The ‘good Traveller’ who will tone down or modify identifying traits, so that the complexity or messiness of cultural identity appears to be, in that instant, uncomplicated, will do so to appease settled friends and co-workers, continuing to negotiate a power dynamic and cultural encounter that is imbalanced.
5.6 How impairment interacts with Traveller identity outside the community