ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the broader communities from which the subjects of our research, trafficked children, are drawn, opening out discussion of key contextual features introduced in Chapter 1, in particular, the dialectics of identity as woven by and into mobilities and marginalisation. This is best understood by looking at the various articulations of the history of the Romani, as produced both from within and beyond the heterogeneous communities that claim this name. Romani history, or histories, is inseparable from the way dominant populations have constructed their own identities and how their social and political status and the values they hold have been challenged by the presence of the Romani as ‘outsiders’. These identities of the dominant, which incorporate notions of nation state, citizenship, class, borders etc., in turn carry normative contrasts with characteristics that have been regarded as generic components of Romani identity, notably mobility or nomadism, widely construed as ‘the Gypsy way of life’. Mobility may involve a number of contrary conditions and realities which are contingent upon the context and status of those in movement. For the dominant groups, tourism, migration, peripatetic work (when construed as a productive force for the receiving country) and pilgrimages all tend to be viewed in a positive light in contrast to refugee migration, trafficking, ‘irregular’ migration and so on. For Romanis themselves, chosen as opposed to enforced or unwilling migration is critical. Often at play in these diverse contexts are local conditions and the advantages and disadvantages they bring to different communities. For the Romani, in many cases, nomadism has been a result of negative factors as well as the more romanticised versions of the ‘free spirit’ that has imprinted Romani identity in the minds of the static non-Romani dweller. As we emphasise in this book, the long-standing association of Romani peoples with mobility is, in the context of trafficking, fundamentally entwined with the issues concerning free movement of people within the European Union.
