The Travellers: Ireland’s Ethnic Minority :: Essays Papers

The travelers Irelands Ethnic MinorityWho are the Travellers?The Travellers, a minority community indigenous to Ireland, have existed on the margins of Irish fraternity for centuries. They share common descent, and have distinct cultural practices - early marriage, commit to be mobile, a tradition of self-employment, and so on. They have distinct rituals of remnant and cleansing, and a language they only speak among their own. Travellers are not everywheretly conscious of a sense of group history. Concern with ancestry is an obsession of those who value permanence of pop. Rather, the individual is defined by his/her place within the relationship net wager. They live in ex executeed patriarchal families, prefer trailers, tend to nomadism interspersed with occasional house dfountainheading, and maintain a nomadic mindset notwithstanding when settled a house is considered only a stopping place between journeys, whether the stop lasts 20 days or 20 days There are an estimated 21 ,000 Travellers currently living in the Republic of Ireland, over half of whom have no access to toilet facilities, electricity, refuse army or piped water.In the past they invariably travelled, but misguided presidential term policy from the 1960s onward ensured that many were persuaded to settle in houses a policy that, in undermining traditional values and lifestyle, is increasingly questioned, if not actively altered. Traditionally, they were metal workers, hawkers, traders in horses and used goods of all description, and provided services where and when there were gaps in the market. This resistance to wage labour and alternative cultural definition of work led to charges of idleness by the uncomprehending. The necessity of living on their wits led to a stereotype of Travellers as shrewd, even cunning, dealers. Having been persuaded to settle in houses, and consequently, having lost the mobility necessary to their traditional trades, many Travellers today rely on state welfa re assistance. This could be construed as a sinister disposal plot, but for the fact that government policy on Travellers has never been well planned enough to effect any successful strategy Ironically, Traveller representative Michael McDonagh believes that Travellers that are the close nomadic are also the most economically successful, and also have far less difficulty with their individualism than people forced into settlement (quoted in Nomadism in Irish Travellers identicalness. From Irish Travellers Culture and Ethnicity.Eds. McCann et al. Belfast Institute of Irish Studies, 1994, 95-109). Their position is equivalent to that of the gypsy of Europe in some respects.