In this volume the authors present an alternative approach to the history of gypsies and travelling groups in western Europe. By focusing on processes of social construction, stigmatization and categorization, they offer new insights into the development of government policies towards itinerants in general and the ethnicization of some of these groups in particular. They analyze the western images and representations of gypsies and other itinerant groups, at the same time focusing on their functions for the labour market. By doing so, they add a new chapter to the field of social history.

In this volume the authors present an alternative approach to the history of Gypsies and Travelling Groups in Western-Europe. By focusing on processes of social construction, stigmatization and categorization, they offer new insights into the development of government policies towards itinerants in general and the ethnicization of some of these groups in particular. They analyze the Western images and representations of Gypsies and other itinerant groups, at the same time focusing on their functions for the labor market. By doing so, they add a new chapter to the field of social history.

Using an oral history approach, this book draws on Gypsy and non-Gypsy narratives to tell the story of Gypsy forced dislocation from Bayramic, a northwestern town of Turkey, in 1970. Gül Özatesler examines memory construction, the categories of Gypsyness and Turkishness, and the different perspectives and positions that emerged, considering all in relation to underlying socioeconomic structure. The book reveals how ethnic and other identities can be deployed to conceal socioeconomic and political inequalities.

By the early 20th century, Gypsies in Germany and Italy were pushed outside the national community and subjected to the arbitrary whims of executive authorities. This book offers an account of these exclusionary policies and their links to the rise of nationalism, liberalism, and the modern bureaucratic state.

Gypsies, Egyptians, Romanies, and—more recently—Travellers. Who are these marginal and mysterious people who first arrived in England in early Tudor times? Are claims of their distant origins on the Indian subcontinent true, or just another of the many myths and stories that have accreted around them over time? Can they even be regarded as a single people or ethnicity at all? Gypsies have frequently been vilified, and not much less frequently romanticized, by the settled population over the centuries. Social historian David Cressy now attempts to disentangle the myth from the reality of Gypsy life over more than half a millennium of English history. In this, the first comprehensive historical study of the doings and dealings of Gypsies in England, he draws on original archival research, and a wide range of reading, to trace the many moments when Gypsy lives became entangled with those of villagers and townsfolk, religious and secular authorities, and social and moral reformers. Crucially, it is a story not just of the Gypsy community and its peculiarities, but also of England's treatment of that community, from draconian Elizabethan statutes, through various degrees of toleration and fascination, right up to the tabloid newspaper campaigns against Gypsy and Traveller encampments of more recent years.

The book explores the notion of Gypsy and Traveller ethnicity and provides a critique of the conceptual basis of racial and ethnic categorisation. An analysis of the post-war housing situation is given in order to illustrate a connection between social and economic conditions, legislation affecting gypsies and travellers and the visibility and general consciousness of the gypsy and traveller population. The originality of the book lies in its argument that the position of gypsies and travellers largely arises out of social conditions and interaction rather than political, biological or ideological determinants. It puts forward the notion of an ethnic narrative of traveller identity and illustrates how variations of this have been defensively deployed by some travellers and elaborated on by theorists. Belton focuses on the social generation of travellers as a cultural, ethnic and racial categorization, offering a rational explanation of the development of an itinerant population that is less ambiguous and more informative in terms of the social nature of the gypsy and traveller position than interpretations based on 'blood', 'breed', 'stock', ethnicity or race that dominate the literature.