ABSTRACT
Liebich suggested that the fear of incurring financial responsibility for children born in the parish was largely to blame for such hostility and concerns that Gypsies would become a burden on local communities undoubtedly informed a good deal of local resentment throughout the period of study. This chapter focuses on relations between itinerant Roma and Sinti and the communities they visited. It also looks more closely at relations engendered by more permanent settlement. Local communities viewed begging with a degree of ambivalence, and rather differently to the police and officials, most of whom saw it simply as criminal behaviour born of indolence. Local residents were not always guided by hostility or fear, nor by pity, and the economic relationship was never one limited to charity and dependency. There remained considerable demand for the services that migrant Sinti and Roma provided and many rural businesses also continued to value their custom.
