Gens du voyage

Those of you in the UK will have heard about the Channel 4 TV show My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, one of the more offensively racist offerings on UK public television recently. The Guardian has a moving piece on the lives of Gypsy and Traveler women in its lifestyle section today, and the effect that show has had on people's perception of them.

I often find myself thinking that there is not much development work to be done in Europe these days, outside of the truly poor countries in Southeastern Europe. But it strikes me that many of the issues facing Roma and Travelers are traditional development issues: things like poverty, illiteracy, education, violence, domestic abuse. I think there is also a large gap in understanding between gens du voyage (the French term for Roma and Travelers, which I like) and what the article calls "Settled people". Who of us could possibly identify with this kind of experience:

When Traveller girls are growing up, they are only allowed to go out with other family members, and once married, her husband rules the roost. "The men would never allow a woman out with her friends," says Kathleen. "That's why we want to live on a site, for company." Kathleen, after spending time in a refuge after finally managing to escape her husband, was initially allocated a house, as opposed to a plot on a site. Almost immediately her children became depressed. "It's like putting a horse in a box. He would buck to get out," says Kathleen. "We can't live in houses; we need freedom and fresh air. I was on anti-depressives. The children couldn't go out because the neighbours would complain about the noise."  

Please don't mistake  me - I do not pull that quote out for the sake of romanticizing Gypsy life or to talk about how they are naturally free spirits who should not be tied down or some other nonsense. I just think that someone who hasn't lived that way would have a hard time understanding what someone in such a situation would need, and what would be the best way to help them. This is really about being shut out of a world that doesn't see you as a part of it - what Žižek calls the part of no-part, the essential element of his definition of the Proletariat.There is hard, hard work to be done here - not to integrate gens du voyage into our world, but to expand our vision of the world such that it includes them.