Criminalizing Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers in the UK

10 Criminalizing Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers in the UK Zoë James This chapter explores the multiple and various ways in which anti-Gypsyism has functioned in the UK to marginalize and exclude Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller communities. The chapter will evidence how the criminal justice process has served as an apparatus to contain Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers and has prevented them from flourishing as individuals and communities. Having established who the Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers in the UK are, the chapter will set out how legislation and policy have, over time, been developed, designed, and delivered in ways that have negatively impacted their lived experience. In order to do this, it is necessary to consider a range of legal provisions and associated policies that relate to planning law and public order law, and, indeed, to identify the contradictory nature of the legislation in different areas. Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers have failed to fit colonial perceptions of what it is to be ‘civilized’ and, as such, their ways of life have effectively been criminalized by a state that has repeatedly failed to meet their needs, expectations, and rights. To appreciate how the state has failed, the chapter will examine the excessive imprisonment and over-policing of Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers. The chapter draws upon literature gathered from across the social sciences and knowledge attained from a breadth of empirical research completed over a long academic career of working with Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers. The theoretical underpinnings of the chapter are informed by critical approaches to criminology and criminal justice that acknowledge the impact of colonialism over time, which is ongoing and embedded in some attempts at decolonial thinking (Tauri, 2021). The author has no Gypsy, Roma, or Traveller heritage and does not speak for those communities. Rather, I hope that I am able to use my privilege to open doors for conversations, to prise open space for discussion in notoriously closed academic spaces, and support Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers to challenge the status quo. Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers in the UK Romantic notions of who is legitimate and who is not amongst Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller communities have abounded in public discussion and academic debate (Clark, 2006; James, 2020; Okely, 1983). This discourse has placed them in an “idealised historical past” (Taylor & Hinks, 2021, p. 630) and augmented negative perceptions of all Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers DOI: 10.4324/9781003176619-12 This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. 103 Zoë James by creating false ideas of the ‘real Gypsy’ as a darker-skinned person, living in a horse-drawn painted wagon, and dancing in vividly coloured clothes. Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers cannot possibly meet this imposed racialized representation of who they are. Indeed, the association of the romanticized version of identity with specifically being a Romany Gypsy has meant that a hierarchy of legitimacy has developed that has placed people of Romany Gypsy heritage perceptively above other groups of Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers as they more closely align to the stereotype. In real terms, the communities that make up the contemporary grouping of Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers in the UK are diverse and complex. In mainland Europe, the moniker ‘Roma’ is used, as per agreement at the first World Romani Congress in 1971 (Council of Europe, 2011), to represent a diverse range of peoples whose commonality lies in their Indian origins although the origins of Roma are contested to some degree (Hancock, 2000; Matras, 2004; Okely, 1983). The identities of Roma in Europe include the Sinti, Kale, Manus, Kalderas, Lovari, and Romanichals, to whom Liegeois (1994) refers as “a rich mosaic of ethnic fragments” (p. 12, see also Kostadinova, 2011). There are approximately 10 to 12 million Roma people in Europe (Willers & Johnson, 2020). In the UK, there is a clear distinction made between Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers, and pride is associated with each of those titles. This differs significantly from the European mainland, where the use of the word ‘Gypsy’ is pejorative. ‘Roma’ in the UK has tended to refer to recent Roma migrants from mainland Europe during the latter part of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century. Roma are a distinct ethnic group and therefore protected by equalities legislation in the UK. Roma have a common heritage, but what mainly provided solidarity between essentially diverse communities across Europe over time were the shared experiences of exploitation, exclusion, slavery, and execution (Achim, 2004; Alliance Against Anti-Gypsyism, 2017; Bancroft, 2005). The subjugation of Roma has been sustained through processes that have criminalized, securitized, and minoritized them (Van Baar, 2011; Yildiz & De Genova, 2018). Approximately 200,000 migrant Roma live in the UK (Brown et al., 2013), though this is an estimate due to a lack of coherent source information. Brown et al. (2013) provide an outline of Roma migration from mainland Europe to the UK and the difficulties they have faced since being in the UK (see also Beluschi-Fabeni et al., 2019). Further, they note that as Roma migration to the UK has increased in the twenty-first century, their specific needs and concerns have been complex and rarely identified as bespoke compared to Gypsies and Travellers. The significant difference between Roma, and Gypsies and Travellers is where they would choose to live. Many Gypsies and Travellers in the UK prefer to live in temporary structures or mobile homes, and case law has acknowledged their cultural aversion to living in ‘bricks-and-mortar’ accommodation. Migrant Roma, on the other hand, choose to live in settled housing. In the UK, it has been estimated that Gypsies and Travellers, not including Roma, constitute approximately 200,000 to 300,000 people (Brown et al., 2013), though some estimates are much higher, suggesting that Gypsies and Travellers make up 1–1½ percent of the population ( James, 2019). The title ‘Gypsy’ refers to Romany Gypsies whose heritage, identified particularly through their language, is in common with Roma and of whom records note their arrival in the UK in the fifteenth century. Legal recognition of Romany Gypsies as an ethnic group occurred under the Equality Act 2010 in England and Wales, following case law in 1989 (Greenhall & Willers, 2020). Romany Gypsies are the largest group of Gypsy, Roma, and Travellers in the UK (Clark, 2006) and their identity is closely aligned with their culture: their ways of living and moral values. Romany Gypsies tend to be very family focused and they traditionally live according to relatively strict moral codes, including those concerning relations 104 Criminalizing Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers in the UK between genders, family roles that tend to be gendered, and rules of cleanliness that require consideration of hygiene at all times. The rules of cleanliness are particularly important as they inform many Romany Gypsies’ desire to not live in bricks-and-mortar accommodation whose internal plumbing is considered unclean (Foley, 2010). Also of Romany heritage are the Welsh Kale, a very small group of people in North Wales whose origins are Romany. One argument suggests that the Kale represent the more ethnically distinct Romany Gypsy – Kale meaning black in the Romany language and representing the darkness of Welsh Kale skin. However, debate even ensues regarding whether the Kale exist at all (Clark, 2006). Scottish Travellers or Gypsies live throughout Scotland and are linked culturally to Romany Gypsies, particularly by their language, in parts of Scotland. There are records of Scottish Travellers in Scotland from the fifteenth century, similar to English Romanies. Scottish Travellers, again, follow similar cultural norms to other traditional Gypsies and Travellers and, likewise, they have been recognized as an ethnic group by the Scottish government via case law since 2008 (Greenhall & Willers, 2020). The term ‘Traveller’ is broad and can refer to many communities. Most commonly, Traveller has referred to Irish, or Pavee, Travellers who have been mobile across the UK and Ireland for centuries but are most associated with a migration from Ireland in the nineteenth century. Irish Travellers gained legal recognition in England and Wales as an ethnic group in 2000 following case law and previously in Northern Ireland within the Race Relations (Northern Ireland) Act 1997 (Greenhall & Willers, 2020). The culture of Irish Travellers is born from their history in Ireland, which dates back to the fifth century and is similarly organized to Romany Gypsies’ culture. Irish Travellers have strict moral codes, close family ties, and cleanliness rules. However, Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers are distinct communities, have rarely mixed and show some antipathy towards each other (Clark, 2006). Other groups of Travellers in the UK are Showpeople and New Travellers, but neither of these groups has been recognized as having protected characteristics in equality law despite their cultures and lifestyles bearing significant similarities to Gypsies and Travellers, and, as will be discussed in due course, they are recognized as Gypsies and Travellers within other legislation. This means, however, that they are not protected against discrimination based on their Traveller identity. Showpeople are commercial Travellers who move from town to town in the fair season between February and November (Clark, 2006). Showpeople have had an ancient charter to hold fairs since the twelfth century and in the summer there may be as many as 250 fairs in UK towns at any one time. The Showmen’s Guild acts as representative of Showpeople in the UK and governs the large majority of fairs that run. Showpeople have similar cultures to Gypsies and Travellers, particularly concerning their familial bonds and cultural expectations. New Travellers, on the other hand, are some of the newest people to take up a travelling way of life in the UK. They came into being in the late 1970s and early 1980s and are commonly associated with music festival culture. However, research has shown that many New Travellers were pushed into travelling due to poverty or social exclusion (Martin, 2002). They responded to this exclusion by aspiring to traditional Gypsy and Traveller lifestyles and have now been nomadic for more than a generation (Clark, 1997). Nowadays, the overarching grouping ‘Gypsy, Roma, Traveller’ – or the acronym GRT – tends to be used as an inclusive way of ensuring representation of all those people with similar heritage as outlined above. However, it has been argued elsewhere that this conflation of peoples’ identities increases their exclusion as it fails to acknowledge their differences and strengths and serves to diminish them as racialized communities of difference (James, 2021). 105 Zoë James Law and Policy – Categorizing and Containing Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers The chapter has already briefly noted legal protections provided to some Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers in the UK within race relations legislation that acknowledges their various identities. They mean that some Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers can challenge racist discrimination against them within work and social life, as well as bias-motivated or ‘hate’ behaviours against them. While slow in being realized by only coming into being in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century, this legislation has been important in ensuring many Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers can call upon these protections to challenge racism and prejudice. However, the discrimination and prejudice faced by Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers over time, and specifically from public agencies, has meant that they commonly lack the agency and confidence, as well as knowledge of legal processes and remedies, to call upon the law when they are treated badly. Indeed, the everyday nature of prejudice and systemic discrimination experienced by Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers has meant these communities often see such behaviours as incidents of everyday hate crimes, which they also regularly experience based on their identity (James, 2020). Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers have historically been associated with nomadism and arguments persist regarding the legitimacy of this connection (van Baar, 2011). In wider Europe, the association of Roma with nomadism has been highly problematic as it has implied that Roma are a ‘stateless’ people. Governments, particularly those that have embraced right-wing ideologies, have used this approach to facilitate the exclusion and expulsion of Roma from states, despite EU acknowledgement of their citizenship and the EU Framework for Roma Inclusion, which formally placed expectations on EU states to recognize the rights of Roma (Kóczé & Rövid, 2012; Luggin, 2012). As noted by Howard and Vajda (2017), Roma – presented as a pan-European ethnic minority – can symbolize the need for European governance that simply serves to reinforce institutions and processes that perpetuate anti-Gypsyism and normalize attitudes that sustain anti-Gypsyism. In the UK, the governance of Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers, which previously outlawed them as vagrants, thieves, and vagabonds (Taylor, 2014), has shifted in the contemporary era to protect them as vulnerable, marginalized denizens according to the European model (Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2016). The idea that Roma, Gypsies, and Travellers are vulnerable is highly problematic as it removes their capacity for agency and fails to recognize their successes, their apparent resilience and their resistance (Belton, 2013; Howard & Vajda, 2017). Thus, Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers have been subject to assimilationist mechanisms that have attempted to address what has been perceived as most problematic about their cultures: their apparent nomadism. In the UK, as previously stated, Roma do not tend to want to live according to any traditional nomadic norms. In other words, they are keen to settle in secure housing that has often eluded them in their previous home states due to prejudice and discrimination. However, Gypsies and Travellers in the UK have embraced their nomadic roots in three ways. First, they often choose to live in accommodation that is not bricks-and-mortar. Second, they often choose to be mobile. And third, they have embraced a culturally nomadic approach to life. Van Baar (2011) has noted caution in romanticizing nomadism in direct opposition to sedentarism. In the UK, Gypsies and Travellers utilize their nomadism to traverse the virtual and physical boundaries between them and wider society that is hateful towards them. It is worth noting here that research has clearly shown that public perceptions of Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers in the UK are routinely negative and more so than towards any other minoritized communities (Abrams et al., 2018; Pew Research Center, 2014). A sedentarist binary approach 106 Criminalizing Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers in the UK to nomadism within UK state systems has meant that Gypsies’ and Travellers’ nomadism is reduced simply to mobility. This fails to understand or appreciate the culturally nomadic nature of Gypsy and Traveller communities, that is, their predisposition to think and act in a boundless fashion, which includes a range of approaches to living that are connected to notions of freedom and autonomy (Acton, 2010; Halfacree, 1996; Levinson & Sparkes, 2004; Shubin, 2010). A sedentarist binary logic to Gypsy and Traveller cultures denotes that nomadic people are those who are constantly mobile without stopping, and non-nomadic people are those who stop and will never be mobile. Many Gypsies and Travellers in the UK are mobile and many are not, but state (and public) perceptions of them as constantly on the move have meant that they have been demonized in the public imagination as ‘place invaders’ who constitute a threat to the dominant sedentary way of living (Kabachnik, 2010). The sedentarist binary logic of UK governments towards the nomadic lifestyles of Gypsies and Travellers in the UK has dictated policies and guidance on defining who constitutes a Gypsy or Traveller, as well as who can stop and stay in particular places. The two areas of legislation that have consistently served to problematize and ultimately criminalize Gypsies and Travellers are public order and planning law. Public order law defines what behaviours and actions disrupt the peaceful habit of life within public space while planning law determines how land is used, what areas of land are developed, and who can live where. Before the 1960s, in the UK, Gypsies and Travellers had utilized traditional stopping grounds to live on when mobile, and/ or to settle on for periods of time or long term. Many of these places were on common land but the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960 closed the commons to Gypsies and Travellers. Further, other places to stop and stay likewise diminished in the post-war years as farm work, cropping, and other rural occupations were mechanized, meaning that much traditional work carried out by Gypsies and Travellers, which also provided accommodation space, disappeared (Clark, 2006). In 1968, the Caravan Sites Act required local authorities to provide sites for Gypsies and Travellers to stop and stay in their areas. However, local authorities failed to fulfil the requirements under the legislation, because, similar to now, councillors were unwilling to support site provisions that would risk their likelihood of electoral success amidst popular prejudice against Gypsies and Travellers (Casciani, 2004). Gypsies and Travellers, therefore, increasingly resorted to stopping at places that local authorities did not formally recognize. Tensions between Gypsies and Travellers and the settled community consequently increased in the post-1968 period, as Gypsies and Travellers found themselves relying on places to stop and stay that encroached on settled communities’ lifestyles (Murdoch & Johnson, 2004). So, for example, Gypsies and Travellers stopped and stayed in public spaces such as parks, community fields, and car parks, which caused disruption and confusion to the settled population. Settled communities felt subsequently unable to use those spaces due to the mess left behind because local authorities refused to provide services such as rubbish collection. The crisis of accommodation for Gypsies and Travellers has been exacerbated by extensive eviction actions taken by local authorities and police to move Gypsies and Travellers out of their geographical areas and beyond their responsibility (James, 2006, 2007; James & Richardson, 2006). Government responses to community tensions between Gypsies and Travellers and settled people, and the crisis of accommodation faced by Gypsies and Travellers, led to attempts to assimilate those communities into settled housing. The colonial model of civilized living, as embedded in the post-war welfare system, was oriented around the provision of housing. Taylor (2014) has referred to the experience of housing for Gypsies and Travellers as ‘house death’. For many Gypsies and Travellers housing was culturally anathema and so they stayed in their mobile accommodation or bought land to set up sites to live where they could. Those people who 107 Zoë James did not have the means to buy land were reliant on local authority provision of places to stop and stay, but the short supply and lack of legitimacy for many communities, particularly Irish Travellers, meant that they increasingly moved into housing, despite the distress this caused. Even those people who could afford to buy land were stymied by the refusal of their planning applications for permission to live there (Ellis & McWhirter, 2008). Therefore, Gypsies and Travellers were placed in precarious positions wherein their ways of living were deemed illegitimate and their attempts to adapt put them in conflict with planning officers who prosecuted them for illegal development of land and police officers who moved them on from stopping at what police considered ‘inappropriate’ public places. In the 1980s, public order law was utilized as a key tool to move Gypsies and Travellers on from land they had stopped and/or stayed on that was deemed inappropriate, despite them often having nowhere else to go. The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 introduced draconian measures that criminalized trespass and provided the police with extensive powers of eviction to move Gypsies and Travellers on from public and private spaces and to seize their homes if they refused to move (James, 2006). Meanwhile, local authorities did very little to accommodate Gypsies and Travellers, despite increasing research evidence that showed the health and welfare needs of Gypsies and Travellers required acute support as a direct outcome of their lack of secure accommodation (Cemlyn et al., 2009). Political rhetoric regarding Gypsies and Travellers in the 1980s and 1990s was highly negative, abusive and hateful, and malignant media augmented racist attitudes towards Gypsies and Travellers within society generally (James & Richardson, 2006). Increasingly ‘joined-up’ approaches between police and welfare services meant that what little trust and confidence Gypsies and Travellers had in those agencies was destroyed and remains so (James, 2020). The resilience of Gypsies and Travellers is rarely discussed and can be deemed patronizing if taken out of context or used to ratify the responsibilization of minoritized people (Belton, 2013). However, the activism within Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller communities and their solidarity in the face of overwhelming social, political, and economic exclusion was vital in engendering some social change. In the early 2000s, Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers lobbied for legislative change and specifically for appropriate accommodation provisions for communities. The Housing Act 2004 subsequently required local authorities to measure explicitly the accommodation needs of Gypsies and Travellers within their planning processes, which led to the completion of a raft of such assessments across the UK. These assessments were often excellent and highlighted the breadth of poverty, exclusion, and discrimination Gypsies and Travellers had experienced as a consequence of racism, prejudice, and associated failures to accommodate them. Further, they often highlighted the severe impacts of aggressive policing tactics towards Gypsies and Travellers, as well as the wider hate harms they experienced in everyday life (James, 2020). The moment of promise that the Housing Act 2004 had elicited was not met by provisions, however, and despite the initial accommodation needs assessments being comprehensive in their recommendations, local authorities failed to act. It is highly likely that the task they saw before them was too great, but moreover the ingrained racialized prejudice towards Gypsies, Roma and Travellers and the associated failure to respect their different cultures and ways of living meant that their needs were ignored and their demonization increased. Standing (2014) has referred to the places and spaces into which marginalized and minoritized people are pushed as the ‘precariat’. The precarity of everyday life for Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers has not diminished. National planning policy in 2015 redefined who constituted a ‘traveller’ (sic) in relation to site provision. This returns us to the sedentarist binary logic within law and policy in this area. Planning law has consistently utilized a definition of Gypsy and 108 Criminalizing Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers in the UK Traveller identity that uses economic mobility as the defining feature of those communities. Hence, mobility is the required characteristic that determines whether a person is a Gypsy or Traveller within planning law. This means that all those people who align with a mobile lifestyle, including Showpeople and New Travellers, are recognized as belonging to Gypsy and Traveller communities. However, a lack of mobility within this policy removes any rights to planning provisions in this area. Hence, a paradox occurs: those people who are recognized as ethnic minorities within equalities legislation (Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers) but have settled on sites rather than in housing (perhaps due to having young children, due to infirmity or old age) are not considered ‘travellers’ and their homes are placed at risk (James & Southern, 2018). Most recently, in the UK, the government passed the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which augmented existing public order legislation and police powers to evict Gypsies and Travellers from land. Even the police nationally objected to this legislation on the basis that Gypsies and Travellers have nowhere to go (Dearden, 2021). Policing and Punishment: Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers as Offenders The problematization of Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers in the UK has occurred over centuries (Okely, 2014; Taylor, 2014) and has not abated in contemporary society, as detailed above, in relation to the development of legislation and policy intended to assimilate their communities or punish them for not living according to what are considered civilized modes of order. There are few studies of Gypsies’, Roma and Travellers’ experiences of criminal justice processes, which is highly problematic, particularly given that stereotypes have long been oriented around perceptions of Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers as offenders (Taylor, 2014). In 2014, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons identified very high proportions of “Gypsy, Romany and Traveller” people in prisons (HM Inspectorate of Prisons, 2014). Further, in his review of prisons in 2017, Lammy (2017) reported that the high proportion of Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers in prison was troubling and a failure of relevant and useful knowledge in this area required redress. Subsequently, research has identified high numbers of Irish Travellers in English prisons and the issues they have experienced there (Gavin, 2019), including harassment and bullying from both other prisoners and guards, reflecting the findings of the earlier HM Inspectorate of Prisons study. However, each account detailed here incorporates different groups of Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers, making true comparisons difficult (James, 2021). Research on the policing of Gypsies and Travellers has likewise been limited. Some studies (James, 2006, 2007) with communities not living in bricks-and-mortar accommodation found that they were often subject to harsh public order policing measures to evict them. However, that research also found that the police had realized that proactive methods of containing these communities would potentially be more cost-effective and less troublesome for the police. Therefore, multiple policing mechanisms were used to manage Gypsies and Travellers and move them on. First, they were subjected to spatial exclusion, meaning that the police worked in partnership with public and private landowners to block Gypsies and Travellers from stopping on land using methods such as the ‘bunding’ of land, i.e., placing fixed barriers in places that meant they could not be accessed. Further, police escorted Gypsies and Travellers through geographical police or council areas – moving them into another area where alternate police forces and local authorities would have to deal with them. Little care was had for the welfare of the communities being moved on or for the authorities into whose area they were moved. Gypsies and Travellers move through spaces in a fluid manner, whereas sedentarists spatially striate their 109 Zoë James environment physically, socially, and cognitively (Halfacree, 1996). Thus, the priority of the police and their partner agencies was to move Gypsies and Travellers out of their area. The other approaches used by police to manage Gypsies and Travellers were disruption and destabilization tactics that interconnect and served to make life very difficult for Gypsies and Travellers. Examples of disruption included infiltration of communications between Gypsies and Travellers to block telephone calls, using stop and search powers each time individuals moved away from other members of the community or a site, and moving people on by very short distances (in one instance literally meters). Destabilizing measures included the regular use of ‘raids’ on Gypsy and Traveller sites for drugs or stolen goods, despite a lack of subsequent arrests or convictions. Indeed, the police variably enforce drug legislation in that they ignored drug use by some Travellers if they were willing to move on. Likewise, there was a lack of application of vehicle legislation if Gypsies and Travellers were prepared to move away from the area. In addition, Gypsies and Travellers noted police patrols during all times of day and night around and within their sites. In the 2000s, local authorities were required to assess the welfare needs of Gypsies and Travellers who came into their areas, but research has evidenced that these assessments were often done by agencies in partnership with police enforcement actions intended to move people on. Gypsies and Travellers would, therefore, move on prior to any potential eviction for fear of police aggression (James & Richardson, 2006). Multi-agency or partnership working was a feature of policing in the 2000s that has persisted due to the apparent cost efficiencies it provides in late modernity wherein fiscal management determines public responsibilities (Reiner, 2010). Even those Gypsies and Travellers living on settled sites experienced securitization as management of the few publicly owned Gypsy and Traveller sites served to control who was living on site, visitors, and movement in and off the site. Common features of such sites were also closed-circuit television cameras as blatant surveillance of site activities, and police patrol and/or welfare visits carried out with personnel from multiple agencies (James & Richardson, 2006). However, despite the attention paid to Gypsies and Travellers, and increasingly Roma, by policing and welfare agencies in the post-war period, and specifically in the early 2000s, their victimization was ignored. Research has evidenced the high levels of hate crimes and incidents that Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers experience alongside their ill-treatment by police and public services (James, 2020). Conclusion This chapter has established who the Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers in the UK are, how legislation and policy have framed, determined, and perpetuated their marginalization, and how their subsequent securitization as a community of risk has meant that they have been over-policed as offenders and under-supported as victims. Contemporary discussions of how to challenge racism and how the structures of governance can shift or swell to accommodate the diverse needs of communities fail to acknowledge the enormous task before us. Racism and prejudice against Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers, i.e., anti-Gypsyism, has been embedded in the very development of contemporary society via colonial norms and expectations that are baked into our understanding of what it is to be civilized (Butler, 1990). Further, the neoliberal capitalist project (Harvey, 2005) has co-opted those norms and expectations in such a way that we do not even perceive its influence (Fisher, 2009). For Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers to flourish we need to deconstruct our perceptions of rights and responsibilities and rebuild social orders that are decolonial and liberatory. 110 Criminalizing Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers in the UK References Abrams, D., Swift, H., & Houston, D. (2018). Developing a national barometer of prejudice and discrimination in Britain. https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/national-barometerof-prejudice-and-discrimination-in-britain.pdf Achim, V. (2004). Roma in Romanian history. Central European University Press. Acton, T. (2010, January 14–15). Theorising mobility: Migration, nomadism, and the social reconstruction of ethnicity [Conference presentation]. Romani mobilities in Europe: Multidisciplinary perspective conference. Oxford, UK. https://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/files/events/abstracts-romani-mobilities.pdf Alliance Against AntiGypsyism. (2017). Anti-Gypsyism: A reference paper. http://antigypsyism.eu/ wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Antigypsyism-reference-paper-PRINT-11.07.2017.pdf Bancroft, A. (2005). Roma and Gypsy-Travellers in Europe: Modernity, race, space and exclusion. Ashgate. Belton, B. (2013). “Weak power”: Community and identity. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36(2), 282–297. Beluschi-Fabeni, G., Leggio, D.V., & Matras, Y. (2019). A lost generation? Racialization and stalled social mobility in a group of Roma migrants in the UK. Migration Studies, 7(2), 180–200. Brown, P., Scullion, L., & Martin, P. (2013). Migrant Roma in the United Kingdom: Population size and experiences of local authorities and partners. https://hub.salford.ac.uk/care-shusu/wp-content/ uploads/sites/125/2020/06/Migrant_Roma_in_the_UK_final_report_October_2013.pdf Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge. Casciani, D. (2004, April 20). The battle for Gypsy land. BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ uk/3639495.stm Cemlyn, S., Greenfields, M., Burnett, S., Matthews, Z., & Whitwell, C. (2009). Inequalities experienced by Gypsy and Traveller communities: A review. https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/ files/research_report_12inequalities_experienced_by_gypsy_and_traveller_communities_a_review.pdf Clark, C. (1997). “New age” travellers: Identity, sedentarism and social security. In T. Acton (Ed.), Gypsy politics and Traveller identity (pp. 125–142). University of Hertfordshire Press. Clark, C. (2006). Who are the Gypsies and Travellers of Britain? In C. Clark & M. Greenfields, (Eds.), Here to stay: The Gypsies and Travellers of Britain (pp. 10–27). University of Hertfordshire Press. Council of Europe. (2011). The Council of Europe: Protecting the rights of Roma. https://edoc.coe.int/ en/roma-and-travellers/5976-pdf-the-council-of-europe-protecting-the-rights-of-roma-.html Dearden, L. (2021, May 18). Police do not want ‘discriminatory’ new laws to criminalise Travellers, senior officer says. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/travellerslaw-caravans-vehicles-discrimination-b1849603.html Ellis, G., & McWhirter, C. (2008). Land-use and planning and Traveller-Gypsies: Towards non-prejudicial practice. Planning, Practice and Research, 23(1), 77–79. Equality and Human Rights Commission. (2016). England’s most disadvantaged groups: Gypsies, Travellers and Roma. https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/is-england-fairer-2016-mostdisadvantaged-groups-gypsies-travellers-roma.pdf Fisher, M. (2009). Capitalist realism: Is there no alternative? Zero Books. Foley, A. (2010). Trailers and tribulations: Crime, deviance and justice in Gypsy and Traveller communities [PhD thesis]. Cardiff University. Gavin, P. (2019). “Prison is the worst place a Traveller could be”: The experiences of Irish Travellers in prison in England and Wales. Irish Probation Journal, 16, 135–152. Greenhall, O., & Willers, M. (2020). Using domestic legislation to tackle race discrimination. In M. Willers & C. Johnson (Eds.), Gypsy and Traveller law (3rd ed., pp. 499–568). Legal Action Group. Halfacree, K. (1996). Out of place in the country: Travellers and the ‘rural idyll’. Antipode, 28(1), 42–72. Hancock, I. (2000). The emergence of Romani as a Köiné outside of India. In T. Acton (Ed.), Scholarship and the Gypsy struggle: Commitment in Romani studies (pp. 1–13). University of Hertfordshire Press. Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford University Press. HM Inspectorate of Prisons. (2014). People in prison: Gypsies, Romany and Travellers. https://www. bl.uk/collection-items/people-in-prison-gypsies-romany-and-travellers Howard, J., & Vajda, V. (2017). Navigating power and intersectionality to address inequality. https:// opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/13431/Wp504_Online.pdf? sequence=1&isAllowed=y James, Z. (2006). Policing space: Managing New Travellers in England. British Journal of Criminology, 46(3), 470–485. 111 Zoë James James, Z. (2007). Policing marginal spaces: Controlling Gypsies and Travellers. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 7(4), 367–389. James, Z. (2019). Gypsies’ and Travellers’ lived experience of harm: A critical hate studies perspective. Theoretical Criminology, 24(3), 502–520. James, Z. (2020). The harms of hate for Gypsies and Travellers: A critical hate studies perspective. Palgrave Macmillan. James, Z. (2021). Roma, Gypsies and Travellers as a community of difference: Challenging inclusivity as an anti-racist approach. Critical Romani Studies, 4(2), 142–162. DOI: 10.29098/crs.v4i2.104. James, Z., & Richardson, J. (2006). Controlling accommodation: Policing Gypsies and Travellers. In A. Dearling, T. Newburn, & P. Somerville (Eds.), Supporting safer communities: Housing, crime and neighbourhoods (pp. 141–154). Chartered Institute of Housing. James, Z., & Southern, R. (2018). Accommodating nomadism and mobility: Challenging the application of a sedentarist binary approach to provision for Gypsies, Travellers and Roma. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 39(3/4), 324–336. Kabachnik, P. (2010). Place invaders: Constructing the nomadic threat in England. The Geographical Review, 100(1), 90–108. Kóczé, A., & Rövid, M. (2012). Pro-Roma Global Civil Society: Acting for, with or instead of Roma? In M. Kaldor & H.L. Moore (Eds.), Global Civil Society 2012: Ten years of critical reflection (pp. 110–122). Palgrave Macmillan. Kostadinova, G. (2011). Minority rights as a normative framework for addressing the situation of Roma in Europe. Oxford Development Studies, 39(2), 163–183. Lammy, D. (2017). The Lammy Review: An independent review into the treatment of, and outcomes for, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic individuals in the Criminal Justice System. https://assets.publishing. service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/643001/lammy-reviewfinal-report.pdf Levinson, M.P., & Sparkes, A.C. (2004). Gypsy identity and orientation to space. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 36(6), 704–734. Liegeois, J.-P. (1994). Roma, Gypsies, Travellers. Manhattan Publishing. Luggin, B. (2012). EU anti-discrimination and social inclusion politics. In H. Kyuchokov (Ed.), New faces of antigypsyism in modern Europe (pp. 80–82). Decade Trust Fund. Martin, G. (2002). New age travellers: Uproarious or uprooted? Sociology, 36(3), 723–735. Matras, Y. (2004). The role of language in mystifying and demystifying Gypsy identity. In N. Saul & S. Tebbutt (Eds.), The role of the Romanies: Images and counter-images of Gypsies/Romanies in European cultures (pp. 53–78). Liverpool University Press. Murdoch, A., & Johnson, C. (2004). Introduction. In C. Johnson & M. Willers (Eds.), Gypsy and Traveller law (pp. 1–20). Legal Action Group. Okely, J. (1983). The Traveller-Gypsies. Cambridge University Press. Okely, J. (2014). Recycled (mis)representations: Gypsies, Travellers and Roma treated as objects, rarely subjects. People, Place and Policy, 8(1), 65–85. Pew Research Center (2014, May 12). A fragile rebound for EU image on eve of European Parliament elections. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2014/05/12/a-fragile-rebound-for-eu-image-on-eveof-european-parliament-elections/ Reiner, R. (2010). The politics of the police. Oxford University Press. Shubin, S. (2010). “Where can a Gypsy stop?”: Rethinking mobility in Scotland. Antipode, 43(2), 494–524. Standing, G. (2014). A precariat charter: From denizens to citizens. Bloomsbury Academic Press. Tauri, J. (2021, October 27). Criminal justice and indigeneity: perspectives from India, Australia and New Zealand [Seminar presentation]. Cambridge. Taylor, B. (2014). Another darkness, another dawn: A history of Gypsies, Roma and Travellers. Reaktion Books. Taylor, B., & Hinks, J. (2021). What field? Where? Bringing Gypsy, Roma and Traveller history into view. Cultural and Social History, 18(5), 629–650. van Baar, H. (2011). Europe’s Romaphobia: Problematization, securitization, nomadization. Society and Space, 29, 203–212. Willers, M., & Johnson, C. (Eds.). (2020). Gypsy and Traveller law. Legal Action Group. Yildiz, C., & De Genova, N. (2018). Un/free mobility: Roma migrants in the European Union. Social Identities, 24(4), 425–441. 112