By recontextualising the concern about children being taken into care I have, inevitably, 'rewritten' the case: at this point, my presentation of the case at the beginning of the chapter (section 5.1) can be read as the framework in which the drop-in staff understood the case; from it being triggered by the Slovak and Czech media coverage of a single case in London, the misinformation created by an unfortunate mix of rumours and privacy rules under the UK child protection system, Roma migrants' misunderstanding of social services in the UK and what looked like exaggerated and irrational reactions to an unjustified panic. Crucially, this framework is based on an erroneous concept of risk as I have discussed in 5.2. In section 5.3 my analysis has referred to knowledges beyond what is commonly seen as 'facts' and introduced past and present experiences of Roma families as relevant for their risk perception; in other words, this section has tried to set out the different framework through which they interpreted the situation. By doing so, I have shown that the definition and acknowledgement
of risk is a contested process. As Beck reminds us, practices of maximising, dramatising, minimising or denying risk, here, for example, in the form of the seemingly sensationalist account by the Slovak and Czech media, the rumours amongst Roma families about children being sold to paying adopting families or the straightforward dismissal of these by the drop-in staff, are a common part of such a process of contestation. Such points are further elaborated in Mary Douglas' cultural perspective on risk which helps to destabilise our taken-for-granted understanding of risk as a rational calculation regarding anticipated dangers but emphasises its ethnocentric nature. I am not claiming here that those Roma families who expressed fear of their children being removed from their families by the UK social services should be considered as non-Western others who have no sense of risk. Instead, I have attempted to show that there is no 'objective' reason to disqualify knowledges other than quantifiable evidence. Furthermore, Douglas' observation of risk as being closely connected with blame draws our attention to issues of positionality.
I argue that disputing or denying the risk in question here entails a two-fold blame put on Roma families: on the one hand, blame is located with them for not understanding the system and thus acting irrationally. On the other hand, the staff members' assurances that the social services do not arbitrarily remove children from their families squarely places blame on the parents affected in such cases. In contrast, the claim by Roma families that such risk existed defined the UK social services that "targeted" them as the source of this danger and thus dismissed any potential responsibility on their part. On both sides, the notion of risk was used to channel views and build consensus around the respective versions of the case. What my analysis points at is that from the Roma families' point of view and according to their knowledge, the risk of being separated from their children existed or was real not because they misunderstood the British system, or did not speak English and were acting irrationally (as the staff members were interpreting it), but, inversely, because they did not speak English and felt they lacked the means and the power to protect themselves against any actions or measures that disadvantaged or discriminated against them. More specifically, it reflects the positionality of those who have learnt to anticipate the worst because of an extended history of violence against them, but also in the face of ongoing and (perhaps more subtle) forms of prejudice and bias in Glasgow. I understand positionality as an interplay of social status categories which one identifies with or is ascribed to (e.g. gender, ethnicity, class) and one's
individual experience. Or as Bettez puts it: "Our positionalities - how we see ourselves, how we are perceived by others, and our experiences - influence how we approach knowledge, what we know, and what we believe we know" (2014, pp. 3-4).
As much as positionality shapes both the production and our interpretation of knowledge, it is also crucial for our understanding and management of risk: the non-Roma staff who were puzzled by what they perceived as rumours and panic were not ill-meaning and did not seem to intentionally portray those who acted to mitigate the risk as ignorant or irrational. However, their outright refusal of such risk can be read as being borne out of an individual or collective lack of similar experiences of oppression as well as their assumed higher position in the social hierarchy with the authority to define for themselves and others what is accepted as a risk and what is not. Likewise, I am not arguing that all these Roma families were fixed in their identities as victims; rather, I suggest that the risk perception and actions taken upon this perception varied in relation to one's positionality. I have presented different ways in which people reacted to this fear, from avoiding any contact with authorities, withdrawing children from certain services, being alert to/wary of strangers, or simply sharing and discussing their concerns. To use Adams' (1995) term, one could presume that these differences had to do with varying 'risk thermostats'. In any case, I argue, their behaviour was far from 'irrational'; rather, it emphasises peoples' agency in the face of uncertainty as they try to mitigate possible adversities within the means and situations which they can control. Finally, even though the risk discussed here appears very specific and affected only a certain group of people amongst my research informants, it may be useful in broader terms as it reminds us of the ways in which what we accept as risk may be preconfigured by our own (cultural, individual) assumptions and imageries of the unknown. My contribution is that in order to understand risks that migrants face in the cities and localities in which they live it is necessary to critically revisit our own claims to knowledge and to recontextualise migrants' fears and concerns in specific histories, experiences, and knowledges.