Fought not Taught: Addressing Coercive Exclusions of Romani (Gypsy), Roma, and Irish Traveller Children

11 Nov 2024

For Romani (Gypsy), Roma and Irish Traveller children educational settings are often where they experience bullying, punitive school policies and low expectations based solely on their ethnicity. An essential element of this paper is the recognition of the long history of ‘stigmatisation, dehumanisation, marginalisation and hostility towards Romani (Gypsy), Roma and Irish Traveller communities both in the UK and in Europe’ which has been resistant to change and is ‘insidious and infiltrating all parts of society including the public psyche’.  Throughout this paper the Traveller Movement will analyse the different ways in which educational institutions comprehensively fail Romani (Gypsy), Roma and Irish Traveller children – a phenomenon The Traveller Movement has termed “institutionally coerced Exclusions”.