That’s how I get on.”
(A Traveller participant with an impairment).
Much has been written by theorists of disability regarding the performance of disability. Most particularly the ways in which performances of disability, sanction physical and verbal
expressions of the disabled experience which are recognisable to and can be read by non- disabled people, result from the fact that disability itself as a category or a public or political identity, is a social construction. Impairment, like ethnicity, is embodied; stigma and social conditioning, however, come from outside. In the case of Travellers with impairments, stigma arises from both aspects of the individual’s identity and status, and how he or she interacts with a dominant culture from two minority perspectives at once.
Research, analysis and interviews with Traveller participants during this research have
produced evidence that, for Travellers with impairments, the aspect of identity which is easiest or most commonly minimised and maintained is that of Traveller status. If one is a Traveller,
stigma arises from infancy regarding one’s status and social role. The subject learns, as a result, to modify or contain the role of Traveller, even to the point of seeking to pass, in response to the structural and everyday implications of stigma and exclusion. For Travellers with impairments, disabled identity provides a possible point of emphasis through which to pass in this way or to minimise Traveller identity by making one part of the individual’s identity, the impairment, more visible than the other. In many cases, it is simply easier to pass as just another person with an impairment, rather than present as a person with an impairment who also belongs to an ethnic minority. As one Traveller participant put it:
“When you’re blind there’s no other choice. But sometimes the Traveller thing, I don’t let on I’m a Traveller ... It’s complicated. I’m not saying I’m not a Traveller, I’m just saying I don’t tell them. If they find out for themselves, that’s fair enough. But I’m not saying it.”
Travellers with impairments represent a category of Travellers who are more likely to have been exposed to settled culture than those without impairments. This is due to their increased experience of residential schools and long-term connections with service providers like day centres or residential settings. The data suggests that Travellers with impairments find themselves in a more precarious position regarding identity, due to both the intersectional or simultaneous nature of the discrimination they may encounter and to the likely possibility of a dependant relationship with settled service provision and settled culture. This precarious position is also reflected in identity or the ways in which travellers with impairments must negotiate their identity in contact with settled culture. The intersectional nature of one’s identity makes necessary a shift in emphasis from one aspect to the other, based on needs.
One recurring example of this need-based concession to passing or focusing on one’s disabled status, rather than Traveller status, was interaction with service providers who had not, as practitioners or institutions, undergone anti-racist training. These institutions and practitioners do not design or deliver culturally appropriate service plans for Traveller users. In such cases, accessing services as a Traveller posed risks, ranging from racist encounters to a simple lack of acknowledgement. However, the general scarcity of service provision in the Traveller subject’s area or within reach of the Traveller subject, means that choosing not to engage with this service provider was often not an option. Participants in interviews felt that they did not have a significant amount of freedom or choice regarding engagement with service provision, and therefore felt inclined to hide or minimise their Traveller identity to access better treatment or
preserve good relations with providers. These participants, as above, described a process of passing as a settled, disabled person, switching from one pole of identity to the other. This strategy was reported casually by participants and seemed to be a natural and habitual form of existing for them – something they were well accustomed to or took for granted.
Until the mid-1990s, Travellers – all Travellers – were ascribed or diagnosed with disabilities, formally or stereotypically, as a racist strategy that was reproduced at an institutional and interpersonal level. This was presumed at point of interaction between Travellers and state medical institutions. In the case of Travellers with impairments, particularly when passing or minimising the Traveller aspect of one’s identity, making the impairment the focus of
interaction between the individual and institution, racism is, participants suggested, less blatant. This relates in part to the nature of the interaction in such instances. The medical establishment, functionally and ideologically, is curative i.e. there to improve or alleviate difficult symptoms of a given impairment and founded on a presumption of progress. Traveller ethnicity, however, is stable and inherent. Where the medical establishment has traditionally engaged with Travellers in a racist capacity, which is to say with an assimilationist agenda and bias, Traveller ethnicity has also been cast as something which should improve or progress. The Traveller subject, in these cases, was often considered to be reverting to their Traveller identity and refusing to progress, assimilate or be ‘cured’.
Relatedly, until the mid-1990s – a point which marks a distinction between a more insular, post-independent Ireland, and a globalised, modernised Ireland, medical professionals routinely felt it was acceptable to lecture and chastise Traveller parents of children with impairments. This was licensed by the popular opinion that intermarriage within extended family groups, more common in the Traveller community than the settled community,
produced impairments. While there are a small number of specific genetic impairments related to consanguinity, most impairments within the Traveller community are not related to
consanguinity. However, a lack of accessible, genetic counselling services in Ireland remains a problem.
As participants in interviews explained, this routine chastisement and blame of parents has become subtler and less common as the medical establishment modernises.