Immigrants as outsiders in the two Irelands

Bryan Fanning, Lucy Michael

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781526140913
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: History

Immigrants as outsiders in the two Irelands examines how a wide range of immigrant groups who settled in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland since the 1990s are faring today. It asks to what extent might different immigrant communities be understood as outsiders in both jurisdictions. Chapters include analyses of the specific experiences of Polish, Filipino, Muslim, African, Roma, refugee and asylum seeker populations and of the experiences of children, as well as analyses of the impacts of education, health, employment, housing, immigration law, asylum policy, the media and the contemporary politics of borders and migration on successful integration. The book is aimed at general readers interested in understanding immigration and social change and at students in areas including sociology, social policy, human geography, politics, law and psychology.

1
Traveller health inequalities as legacies of exclusion

Ronnie Fay

Irish Travellers (often referred to as the Travelling Community) are a small indigenous minority ethnic group in Ireland; a distinct community but with cultural parallels with Gypsy (also called ‘Traveller’) communities in Britain and Roma communities in other parts of Europe. Travellers’ language, customs and values have been profoundly shaped by their traditions, history of nomadism and a long history of being an important part of community life in Ireland while also experiencing marginalisation, racism and exclusion. Travellers are not an immigrant community although many Travellers have migrated from and to Ireland, with some emigrating back and forth to countries such as Britain and the United States where there are Irish Traveller communities that can trace their roots back to the nineteenth century. The 2016 Census identified some 30,987 Travellers in the Republic of Ireland, or approximately 0.7 per cent of the total population. According to Traveller organisations this figure most likely underestimates the total number by several thousand.¹ As a racialised and long discriminated against minority ethnic group failed by generations of policymakers, their experiences, and the struggles of Traveller organisations to secure access to healthcare examined here, are instructive when considering how other groups, including some immigrants, may also come to be marginalised. In particular, common issues and concerns have been identified in respect of Roma in Ireland, whose experiences as outsiders in Ireland are addressed in Chapter 9.

The Equal Status Act 2000 defined Travellers as ‘The community of people who are commonly called Travellers and who are identified (both by themselves and others) as people with a shared history, culture and traditions, including an affinity to a nomadic way of life on the island of Ireland’ (Part 1, Section 2). However, Traveller ethnicity was only formally acknowledged by the state in March 2017 when, in a statement to the Dáil, An Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny declared that ‘Our Traveller Community is an integral part of our society for over a millennium, with their own distinct identity – a people within our people.’²

While an aspiration of nomadism remains a fundamental part of Traveller culture, many Travellers are no longer nomadic de facto, either by choice or due to the lack of support for and the incremental criminalisation of, nomadism by the Irish state which gained pace following the 1963 publication of the Report of the Commission on Itinerancy, the first national report on Travellers.³

I am the Director of the Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre, the longest established Traveller human rights organisation in Ireland. In 2015 we celebrated thirty years of direct engagement with Travellers⁴ and fifteen years with the Roma community living in Ireland.⁵ We recognised the need for solidarity between Roma and Irish Travellers based on shared experiences of racism and discrimination, and common cultural traditions including nomadism. We have worked directly with Roma living in Ireland since 1998 and we officially changed our name from Pavee Point to the Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre in 2012.

The Centre has made significant contributions to the development of both local and national Traveller organisations in Ireland, as well as to Traveller policy developments. These organisations include the Irish Traveller Movement, Mincéirs Whiden, the National Traveller Women's Forum, and the Parish of the Travelling People. Alongside a number of these we are members of the European Network against Racism Ireland. Our work is based on two essential premises: (1) Travellers must be involved in the most important decisions that affect their lives, and (2) racism and exclusionary policies of inclusion have been at the root of Traveller inequalities. Pavee Point was the first organisation to recognise the importance of, and campaign for, state acknowledgement of Traveller ethnicity. Community development, with its principles of social justice, solidarity, equality and human rights, and an approach that involves participation, empowerment and collective action, has been fundamental in informing our work with Travellers and Roma.

A central tenet in our approach is the belief that delivering services based on equality does not mean treating people the same but rather comprises designing policies and implementing programmes that are inclusive, culturally appropriate and appropriate to the needs of groups in society. This can lead to better outcomes for disadvantaged groups, including Travellers and Roma. Fundamentally, we believe that Travellers and Roma should be afforded rights to their cultural identity without experiencing marginalisation and discrimination. There is a need for an urgent response and positive action measures to address current and historic processes of discrimination and to address the social determinants that lead to unacceptable health inequalities.

Traveller health inequalities

In 2010 the All Ireland Traveller Health Study (AITHS), based on research undertaken in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland in 2008, found that at all ages and for all causes of death Travellers experience a higher mortality than the general population. It concluded:

The problem is endemic and complex and will not be solved in the short term without considering the wider contextual issues. The fact that an identifiable disadvantaged group in our society is living with the mortality experience of previous generations 50–70 years ago cannot be ignored. The fact that the gap between Traveller mortality and that in the general population has widened in the past 20 years shows that comprehensive approaches to address this situation are required and are indeed vital.⁶

Eight years since the publication of the AITHS, Traveller health inequalities remain the same, and in some instances, due to improvements in the national population, health disparities have even widened. The AITHS documented:

• Life expectancy for Traveller men is 15.1 years and for Traveller women 11.5 years less than men/women in the general population.
• Traveller men have four times the mortality rate and Traveller women three times the mortality rate of the general population.
• Traveller infant mortality rate is 3.6 times higher than the national rate.
• Suicide rates are six times the national average, accounting for 11 per cent of all Traveller deaths.

The AITHS confirmed that health services available to Travellers were perceived as inadequate and substandard, resulting in Travellers’ low engagement and poor health outcomes. Findings from the study indicate various institutional, cultural, social and structural barriers that restrict Travellers from accessing and engaging with health services. These include discrimination and racism (at both individual and institutional levels); lack of trust in healthcare providers and inappropriate service provision; and lack of engagement from service providers with Travellers and Traveller organisations.⁷

Unfortunately, a lack of understanding of diversity among senior policymakers and political leaders has resulted in Travellers being frequently blamed for their own marginalisation, echoing wider society biases against Travellers. Developing a more inclusive and intercultural society is about inclusion by design, not as an add-on or afterthought. Too often a so-called ‘mainstreaming approach’ has been claimed which in reality fails to meet the health needs of Travellers to the same extent as other groups in society. This, de facto, results in negative outcomes for Travellers and other marginalised groups as their needs are not taken account of and it is assumed that a common/universal approach benefits everyone equally.

Discrimination and racism

Travellers’ marginalisation and discrimination have been observed both nationally and internationally by human rights organisations and monitoring bodies. In an urgent site visit to Ireland in 2016, Nils Muižnieks, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, was ‘deeply concerned at the persisting social exclusion and discrimination Travellers are confronted with in Ireland’ and recommended that targeted policy measures and more effective involvement of Travellers is required to address the ‘serious inequalities that continue to affect the members of this [Traveller] community in accommodation, health, education and, in fact, all fields of life’.⁸ Muižnieks reiterated previous Commissioners’ calls for targeted measures to redress social exclusion and marginalisation of Travellers. Academic research has contributed to this policy area by consistently reporting the extent to which anti-Traveller racism and discrimination exist in Ireland. In 2010, a nati...